Chessington & Hook United 0 vs 1 Guildford City

We welcomed them to Chalky Lane on Tuesday hoping for a repeat result.
Having battled to a weekend draw with Hanworth, a similar game was expected and by and large that’s what we got.

Guildford certainly started the faster, and were denied early on when Fisher acrobatically saved from Jaydon Gibbs, although that proved to be the only time either keeper was called upon in the opening exchanges.

With both sides fully committed the game was littered with stoppages, with the referee spending a lot of time encouraging players not to foul, particularly when Gibbs was on the ball. In fact the referees concern for Gibbs each time he was involved and the first name terms that the officials seemed to promote with the Guildford team was all rather off putting.

With us just about deserving to be on level terms, the Guildford centre back nearly presented Cole- Bolt with an opening but his last ditch tackle just saved the day. From the resulting corner we hit the underside of the bar and try as we might to force the ball over the line the danger was cleared.

The deadlock was finally broken when from a Guildford corner our headed clearance was drilled firmly past Fisher into the bottom corner of the net for a very well taken goal indeed. This wonder strike took some of the belief away at this point, and if anything Guildford could have increased their lead before the half.

In the second half and with us still very much in the game our belief returned, and we began to play with a little more purpose. The possession evened itself out and although we failed to test the visiting keeper as often as we would like, we had played ourselves into the game.

On the hour came the major turning point. Gary Puckett sent off for denying a goal scoring chance when he was the last man after we had missed two opportunities to win the ball back.

At this point it well and truly handed the initiative to the opposition, and we did well to stay just one behind as Guildford were certainly enjoying the greater share of the game. However given that they had failed to increase their lead by a combination of poor finishing, good fortune on our part and some decent last ditch defending, we were still in with a shout as we reached the last ten minutes.

Probably because the game wasn’t settled as perhaps it could have been, Guildford became a little nervous, as they seemed to settle for just the one goal. Their decision to sit deeper to hold on to the lead relying on their lone striker to occupy our back line, actually served us well as we suddenly enjoyed a lot of the ball and created a number of half openings.

Despite managing to get behind their back line more often than expected and having a lot of ball in our attacking third we couldn’t quite work the type of opening needed and lost out narrowly by one goal to nil.