Due to the Half Term there were no League games scheduled for this weekend so we decided to make the most of this chance to try a few different things in a friendly match against Highworth Town.
The first half got underway with some good passing from Bassett which ended up creating early chances for Kalum and Max who were both unfortunate to see their shots go narrowly wide. But then we let Highworth take command of the game by not being strong enough into the tackle and within seven minutes we had conceded 2 goals. This is now becoming our trade mark, having to fight our way back into the game after a sloppy start but again we didn't let the heads drop and started to create some good chances. Again it was Kalum and Max causing the Highworth defence all sorts of problems and before long Kalum had pulled a goal back after receiving the ball from Oliver and making no mistake, this was closely followed by Kalum's second after he beat several Highworth players and coolly slotted the ball home to make it 2-2.
At half time we swapped the goalkeepers around with Max going in and Josh moving into right midfield. We started the second half a lot more relaxed than the first which enabled us to play some good passing football, which is something we haven't seen for a few weeks. Both teams were now looking for the winner and we thought we had got it when Kalum completed his hat-trick with a great shot into the top right hand corner. But with only a few minutes left Highworth managed to equalize after a speculative long range shot somehow bobbled under the unfortunate Max to make the final score 3-3.
This was a good result as we were missing a few players and this was a team who had beaten us twice last season. It gave us the chance to try a new formation of 1-2-3-1 with the aim being to pack the midfield which is where we feel we need to compete more against the better teams. This worked well and we definitely looked stronger but we must work hard to get out of this bad habit of starting too slowly.
Credit: Unknown
Last modified on Monday 21st December 2020 at 18:01
