Another tough home match today against Highworth Town, who we know are a strong side with a few big players who again like Ferndale last week play to their strengths playing a very direct style of football.

Baring this in mind we asked our players to try to be a lot stronger in the tackle and work harder off the ball in the hope that we could prevent Highworth from getting an early grip on the game. But unfortunately this didn′t happen and again we conceded an early goal to make things difficult for ourselves and things could have been worse had Mitchell not been it such fine form making two or three outstanding saves. Everything about the way we started today was poor, our passing, movement, tackling, throw ins and recovery runs were all way below the standard we have set and half time couldn′t come quick enough as in the first half we just weren′t in the game. Too many players were prepared to let someone else do the running and tackling instead of doing it themselves so this is exactly what we spoke about at half time.

The second half started a lot better thanks to our half time chat and at last Bassett were beginning to put together some good passing and movement and before long we equalised through MOTM Martin Bates who is making a habit of scoring spectacular long range strikes. At this point the match had turned in favour of Bassett and all the pressure was coming from the home side. First Max went close with a shot which hit the post and then Josh fired his shot over the bar before Alex and Max linked up well in midfield to create a good chance for Josh to add a second. Then with our next attack Alex again crossed for Josh to stab the ball home to make it 3-1. At this point we looked pretty comfortable until Martin got a knock to his head and a quick substitution had to be made and with Tom not really having chance to settle into his position properly this caused a mix up in the area between him and Mitchell and Highworth were able to pull the score back to 3-2. For the last five minutes Highworth threw everything at us but in all honesty they never really troubled us and the final result ended WBTFC 3 – Highworth Town 2.

A frustrating first half performance and for only the second time in three years Dave and I had to tell the boy′s that they weren′t performing to the standards we expect from them and they should expect from themselves. But again all credit to them they rolled their sleeves up and put in a much better second half display to secure all three points.

MOTM – Martin Bates

Credit: Unknown
Last modified on Saturday 26th December 2020 at 14:44