Wessex League Division One
Brian Whitehead Sports Ground, Downton
Admission including Programme: £5.00
Attendance: 58
With rail engineering works yet again making a trip into or via London excessively long or expensive, I decided to journey along the south coast and into Wiltshire today, to tick off my penultimate ground in the Wessex League Division One.
To reach the Brian Whitehead Sports Ground, I caught the train to Salisbury, then walked ten minutes into the city centre to catch the bus for a 20 minute journey southwards, with the ground about a five minute walk away from the nearest bus stop down a country lane. The entrance to the ground is just beyond a small car park between a large sports hall and the clubhouse, which is spacious and very comfortable inside, and with two real ales from the local Downton Brewery available on cask. After paying admission at a wooden hut, one finds virtually all spectator facilities down the closest length. After passing by the clubhouse wall, there is a tea bar window and then the changing rooms block, before reaching a stand straddling the half way line, containing four rows of bench seating inside. There is just hard standing around the rest of the ground, although a nice feature is that, between two neat, spacious and nicely designed dugouts, there is a colourful board in club colours welcoming visitors to the ground. Trees, which were bare this afternoon, line three sides of the ground, whilst the back walls of a couple of large sports halls form the background behind one of the goals. Rolling hills are just about visible behind the clubhouse length, with houses closer behind the opposite length and behind the other goal. The 28 page programme, included with adult admission, is above average for step 6 - well designed and produced, as expected for a publication produced by JMA Programmes, and with the necessary stats and plenty of interesting articles to read.
In truth, there is not much left to play for both of these clubs this season other than finishing as high as possible. Downton were in sixth place, following 12 wins and five draws from their 27 league games, nine points behind fifth placed United Services Portsmouth and a further ten points behind fourth placed AFC Stoneham, having played two more games than both of those clubs. Fawley were in tenth place, following ten wins and four draws from their 29 league games. The omens certainly pointed towards a home victory, as not only were Downton higher in the table, they were unbeaten in their previous seven games, while Fawley had only won one of their last seven games, and on the morning of this match, their goalkeeper had to pull out due to injury, and centre back by trade Tom Rafferty lined up between the sticks. In the reverse fixture of today's game played back in August, Fawley won 3-2.
On a grey, overcast but mild afternoon, this turned out to be a surprisingly one-sided affair, and even more surprisingly in favour of the visitors, but one that was sadly dominated by the referee. I am usually loathe to criticise referees, but there can be little doubt he had an absolute stinker today. Fawley had the first real chance of the game, when a close range shot was saved by the keeper's head, for which he required some time for treatment. A minute later he was back in action, saving a powerful shot with his outstretched leg. Downton then saw a long range shot hit the woodwork on 6 minutes, this time the Fawley keeper requiring some attention as he crashed into the post as he backpeddled trying to cover the shot. The game then settled down until Fawley were awarded a penalty on the half hour mark. No-one quite knew why, and no-one appealed for it - presumably it was given for shirt pulling. Mark Lilley struck the ball low into the bottom corner to give the visitors the lead. Four minutes later and Fawley doubled their lead when Ben Rankin beat his man to the right side of the penalty area, took a few steps along the outside corner of the penalty area, before firing a stunning shot into the far top left hand corner of the net. On 43 minutes, Fawley were awarded another penalty, this one did look justified following a rather reckless tackle. Lilley struck the ball high into the left side of the net, with the keeper diving the other way. And in added on time, Fawley were awarded their third penalty of the game following a tackle slightly from behind although plenty of contact did seem to be made with the ball. Lilley struck the ball to the left side of the goal, this time low just inside the post and beyond the keeper's dive to complete his hat-trick of penalties, and to give Fawley a very commanding lead at the break.
Downton did not seem to be at the races during the first half, but they did up their game in the second half, without looking likely to get back into the game, although they did come close to pulling a goal back on a couple of occasions. But on 66 minutes, the referee seemed to completely lose the plot. It started with a Downton actually complaining about being awarded a free-kick following minimal contact, and the Downton player would have preferred advantage, if anything, as he passed the ball on. Complaining to the referee was slowing the game down, the protests continued with yellow cards and then a red being shown to Matt Steer, but then despite a Downton player repeatedly shouting "you're a f***ing cheat", he received no punishment whatsoever. Fawley were then awarded the free kick instead, but rather sensibly under the circumstances, gave possession back to the Downton keeper. Happily, the game settled back down after a farcical few minutes, and Fawley scored their fifth on 80 minutes, after the ball was lumped forward for Tom Munday to run onto and thanks to a combination of good touches and favourable bounces, found himself clear to fire the ball past the keeper. In the second minute of added on time, Downton were awarded a penalty of their own for a tackle that did not see to be a foul, and Ben Smith struck the ball low into the right side of the net. The final whistle blew shortly afterwards, to end what proved to be one of the more eventful games, and the referee can surely only hope there was no assessor in attendance.
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