Hampshire Cup - Round Four

Crookham Rovers v Christchurch

Match Result: 0 - 2

Goal Scorers: Olly Balmer, Harry Chapman

Some games you have to accept you grind out an ugly win and go home content with three points (or in this case) progression to the next round of the cup. This was one such occasion. We had been playing our best football of the season and so the premature postponement of last week's game was potentailly not helpful.

We started off asleep and didn't seem to realise that playing on a very uneven surface would not lend itself to passing the ball out of defence. Time and time again in the first couple of minutes a mis-kick or mis-placed pass invited pressure onto oursleves. It was some relief then that with after 4 minutes we scored with our first attack when Olly tucked home. We still didn't learn though. We kept putting each other under pressure with passes hit too short etc. In the 17th minute another attack resulted in Harry lobbing their 'keeper and we hoped that we might go on from here.

We didn't. The game got more and more heated. Their parents were very vocal, their coaches screamed at the young Hants FA appointed ref and we tried to play football.

Overall we should celebrate our win; clean sheet and growing maturity for not reacting to (i) some opposition players who constantly apppealed to the ref, (ii) their parents shouting.