I was there, great game for us, puts us at top of the league ;D....until tommorrow prolly.
Ashton United 0-5 AFC Telford UnitedToday's match was starting to look a real competition for the first 10 minutes with both sides having some good chances though we did dominate posession.
The site of our third kit seemed to confuse a few of the Telford following as they're used to supporting a team in white, failing that red, even last season when this was our away kit the 3rd kit of the time (an older red one) seemed to appear more often. However Ashton's red/white halved shirt lead to us wearing our sky blue kit, I was one of the few that remembered (and cherished the opportunity as I really like this kit!) while many others wore the red or white, I predict a similar situation this year at Witton. I also predict that I have gone very much off topic and rambled on about our wonderful 3rd kit.
On 12 minutes we made yet another after many attacks on their goal and the ball ended up just on the edge of the area not far from the goal line. The keeper ran to it but striker
Steve Foster got there first, with the keeper stranded Foster tookhis shot from the tight angle, it went over the keeper and landed in the net. 1-0 to the (currently blue) Bucks. Ashton seemed to fall apart after this goal, the midfield became non-existand leaving their strikers with no service and next to no chances.
Steve Foster doubled his tally and our lead on 23 minutes with a well placed shot into the back of the net. we contiued constantly attacking for the rest of the half but it stayed 0-2 for the rest of the half.
After half time Ashton's midfield was tempoarily resurrected and a very short midfield battlecame about. Within about a minute though we were back to attacking constantly. On 48 minutes it was back to normal service with our other centre-forward
Gary Hay getting his first of the game. The midfield fell apart again and the defenders were as ineffective as they were before, their number 3 being particularly bad today, making by my count one successful pass all day, number 5's contribution was to keep shouting offside to ref and linos....to no avail.
The goal-keeper tried to keep them in it but was under constant pressure, and was responsible for the 1st goal and then the 4th one aswell. On 63 minutes
Gary Hay got his second goal, he was near the edge of the area and the keeper chose to run out and challenge him, Hay simply tapped it past the keeper and walked it into the net. The keeper's reaction was funny, when the fall went past he simply looked, shrugged and did nothing to stop it, admittedly short of slide tackle Hay for behind, get sent off, let Foster score past Mr Nott-Keeper whose thrown in goal (Unibond 3 bench rule) leaving them with an even weaker defence and one less player.
Hay's reward was being substituted for mid-fielder Glenn Tolley as we switch from our preferred 5-3-2 to a much more defensive 5-4-1. midfielder Karl brown comes off in place of Dean Craven and defender Richard Teesdale is swapped for Dave Woodvine, I can't really comment on any of the first 3 centre-backs (Turner,Teesdale,Khela) preformances as they had little to do, same goes for goal-keeper Stuart brock. Woodvine had even less to do as he wasn't there for the bit of pressure at the start.
On 80 minutes the game was put beyond all doubt with our 5th goal. Turner worked through most of the defence before playing into to
Dean Craven who took his shot and scored.
Unlike many Unibond league matches there was next to no trouble, they had a few bookings after one or two players threw strops near the end (number 3 included) while Steve Foster was booked for retaliating to a nasty challenge. There was a bit of a melee near the end but luckily no one was actually booked as Turner and Wing-back Vaughan were both around there and both already have a few bookings from pre-season for similar incidents, even more luckily Brock didn't get involved this time, though he had little to do all game we don't want our keeper having to look at suspensions and he has been known to jump in to these in past games.
Good game for us as 5-0 is a good result against any side, great performance by all our players, not so great by theres, my MotM for them would have to be their keeper, try as might he couldn't keep the ball out though and though he made some costly mistakes he was the only one of their players to show any real good points. Tough call for our MotM, particularly between Hay & Foster, other everyone played well but I'll also single out midfielders Ben Twigger and Cerl Rodgers for a strong performance.
Final Score Ashton 0-5 Telford.
MotM: 10) Gary Hay, solid performance up front, 2 great goals, set up Foster's second. Big improvment for him personally from Saturday.
I know this is a very long boring post from me but it's not every day I get to report a 5-0 win and being top of the table, or being in our third kit. ;D
There may be a prize for anyone who reads the full thing.
