Colliers Wood United

Bringing in Malik Buari for Oliver Skeete. The latter possibly a little hard done by to be left out.

A sluggish opening saw our back line breached twice in quick succession, Dan Fisher coming to the rescue both times by racing off his line to sweep up, injuring himself on the second occasion when colliding with Chris Davidson and a Colliers Wood forward.

In fact defensively the solid look from Saturday was lost with poor clearances, bad positioning and a reliance on our obvious pace to get us out of trouble the order of the day. In midfield we created very little, our passes failing to find their intended targets and when not in possession failing to match the energy of our opponents. As a result our attacking three had very little to work with.

A gradual improvement mid way through the half saw us begin to create one or two openings and although slightly out of the blue the opening goal was worth the wait. Malik Buari`s cross from wide right met perfectly by Reece Jackson whose well directed header crept inside the post off the wet surface to give us the lead.

Any hopes that this would be the catalyst for us to settle and go on and win comfortably were soon extinguished as our continued sloppiness kept Colliers Wood in the game. However we got to half time with our lead intact and looked to an improved second half showing.

First actions are so important after the break so when Malik Buaris extravagant kick off routine went wrong quickly followed by the reliable Cole-Bolt misplacing a simple pass allowing Colliers Wood to attack and hit the post we had handed the belief straight to our enthusiastic opponents immediately. This shortly after resulted in an equaliser. A harshly awarded free kick initially punched clear by Fisher was immediately volleyed goalwards and despite Fishers acrobatics the ball nestled in the roof of the net.

Still we weren’t at our best and the game had little quality but a lot of huff and puff.

With fifteen minutes to go a cross from the right when their wide man was left unchallenged found our defence all at sea and their forwards powerful header gave the visitors the lead. An immediate change to the formation to play 3-4-3 galvanised us and the sudden urgency from us saw us play as well as we did all night. With the game entering the last ten minutes substitute Oliver Skeete cleverly interchanged passes with Matt Ellis and the young mid fielders first time strike with the outside of his left foot was quite outstanding. Back on level terms we found a new energy and looked most likely to win but time ran out and we had to settle for a point.

We now look forward to the FA Cup, secure that our opening league fixtures have returned us a healthy four points from six.