On Saturday we made the short journey to Fairford Town who as I wrote in my last report had made a very good start to the season, aware that we would have to be on our toes from the first minute and take the initiative away from the home side.

Again we had to make several changes to our squad due to both unavailability and players dropping down from the first team and then John Davis pulling out in the warm up.

We changed our formation from the usual 3-5-2 to 4-4-2 hoping that this would enable both our wide players more freedom going forward and to give us more width throughout the pitch and after a somewhat sticky start it was from some good work on the flank by Simon Edwards that a cross by Danny Clayton was headed in by Garry Ashford who somehow out jumped the keeper in the process doing so in the 21st minute.

The rest of the half was very even between the two teams and we looked very solid in defence with Steve 'BULLHEAD' Howse in commanding form both in the air and on the deck and we went into the interval a goal in front. Unfortunately at half time we had to replace the impressive Matt Griffin due to a dead leg and the veteran Simon Jones stepped into his place for the second half and went about his job in the usual manner and although we were under pressure for most of the second half we looked very dangerous on the break and had several chances to make the game safe through Garry Ashford, Simon Edwards and substitute 'H'.

The last fifteen minutes were real frantic and Rich Stevens made a couple of good saves and as a team we were defending frantically and looked like holding onto our lead but the referee had put his 'ALEX FERGUSON' watch on and in the 95th minute Fairford scored their equalizer to rob us of victory. Although disappointed to concede a late goal you couldn't fault the players effort and commitment and I think we played better than in the two 5-0 victories as the opposition were much superior.

Next week we travel to Highworth for another local derby and another test against one of the stronger teams in the league but we will be confident of getting a result and continuing our good start to the season.

Bassett Line-up: Rich Stevens, Stu Hemsley, Steve Howse, Steve Yeardley, Ben Jarrett, Harry Sandu, Matt Griffin, Mark Hammond, Danny Clayton, Simon Edwards, Gary Ashford

Credit: Paul Burke
Last modified on Wednesday 25th November 2020 at 21:52