Town welcomed Benfleet to Love Lane on Saturday for their 6th league game of the season. As if this league isn't tough enough, for various reasons, Town were missing no fewer than seven regular first team players on the day, Rob Newman, Grandy, Andy Allen, Ready, Wiggy, Jeater & Lee Humphrey and to make matters worse keeper Chris Neal pulled a muscle in the warm up severely hampering his movement. So not the best of preparation but having said that, I was still happy with the starting 11 and remained confident of getting a positive result.

However almost straight from the kick off Town were sloppy in possession and for some unknown reason decided that the best way to play was to constantly launch long hopeful balls rather than play their normal passing game. As a result of this Town surrendered possession to Benfleet all to frequently who quite easily took control of the game and put Town under pressure. Town held out for 20 minutes before failing to clear an attack properly and Benfleet took the lead with a scrappy goal, 0-1. Still Town persisted in their long ball game giving the ball away with alarming regularity and it came as no surprise when Benfleet went 2 up when they exploited not so much a gap, more a chasm down the left leaving the Benfleet striker one on one with Chris Neal and he finished comfortably, 0-2. Chris Neal then made a superb reaction save from close range to keep the score 0-2 going into half time.

At half time a plea was made to shorten the game up, Liam Murphy had to come off as he was struggling with a foot injury and was replaced by Taf returning for his first outing of the season, and how nice it was to see him again. Straight from the kick off Town looked a different team, they shortened the game down and played some delightful passing football. Taf slotted in like he'd never been away and Town started to pose a threat and looked like they could get something out of the game. Polley, who had spent the entire first half trying to feed off long high hopeful punts, and had barely touched the ball, now got himself in the game and reduced the arrears after 5 minutes: he picked the ball up 25 yards from goal , slightly left, cut inside 2 defenders before arrowing a shot from the edge of the box, that never left the ground, into the bottom corner, 1-2 and game on !! A few minutes later Town were level when Polley again picked the ball up, again wide left, drifted round a couple of defenders and fired of a stunning right foot strike that almost decapitated a defender on the line and found its way into the net, 2-2 and it was now all Town. With the Town midfield now dominant, Polley & Stuart Dallaway up front with his strong running and refusal to let defenders settle were causing chaos and there looked only one likely winner. Then, totally against the run of play Benfleet scored a third goal when a right wing run and cross found one of their players totally unmarked 2 yards from goal, needless to say he didn't miss, 2-3. I was still reasonably confident that we could get something out of the game at this stage but within the next 5 minutes Town lost both Stuart Dallaway and Chris Neal, who had to finally give in to the muscle injury sustained in the warm up. This seemed to disrupt Town and they lost their way a bit and were unable to put the Benfleet goal under any sustained pressure. Try as they might Town couldn't force another equaliser although they did have 2 reasonable penalty appeals waved away but to be fair Benfleet looked threatening on the break and maybe could have scored again. The final whistle went and although Town probably deserved a point on the day the fact remains that at this level you cannot give teams a 2 goal start, which we appear to be doing on a regular basis at the moment.

Player of the match this week is Chris Neal who bravely soldiered on through the pain, couldn't be faulted for any of the 3 goals, and made a fantastic point blank save just before half time to keep Town in the game. Last but not least, my thanks go to Rob Richardson and Paul Cook who stepped in at the last minute to help out.

El Col