Barton 1 - 1 City Life 23/2/08

And off to the Barton dump we all went! It was windy, it was bumpy, the ground was awful! Starting 11 was Matt in goal, Ian, James, Sam and Tom at the back. Luke, Col, John, Matt and Dave in midfield and Martin up front.

In the first half we kicked off into a strong headwind. Barton threw everything at us for 45 minutes. By and large the defence were holding out superbly. A few good saves from Matt, most notably from a Dave header when defending a corner but that was after Barton had gone 1-0 up. A momentary lapse in the defence saw a Barton player run through and slot the ball past our keeper.

Sam and the rest of the team then produced defending the type of which had only ever been seen before at The Alamo. Last ditch tackles, shots being blocked, headers won and corners defended effectively!! As you may have guessed there wasn’t a lot of quality or possession going forward.

Half time came and went. Mike gave us a rollicking and rightly so. Sadly the quality of play didn’t improve much.

The formation changed to 4-4-2 after half time. Dave went right, Matt went left, Luke went up front. Still there was no real effective attacking play and things were looking dead in the water. Wayne came on for Matt followed shortly by Oeyvind coming on for John. Wayne moved into the middle and Oeyvind went on the left. City Life picked up a little momentum but there were no real chances.

All of a sudden Martin got into a fracas with their captain and centre back and a free kick was awarded. Martin stood over the kick. The ref sent the wall back the required distance and Martin stepped up and looped the ball into the keepers far corner for the equaliser. After this moment there was only one team looking likely to win the game. City Life had a few more chances to steal the three points, the best of them falling to Oeyvind who narrowly placed a shot wide after some of the best passing of the game.

For Barton it was the first points dropped since Christmas, for City Life a hard fought point with a far from convincing performance however it may have been one of those matches when we had come away with nothing. No-one was arguing about the draw.

Matt Double

Dave Halse, 02/03/2008