Thursday 30 August 2007

Woodbridge Town 4 Stowmarket Town 5

Woodbridge Town’s Under 18s began their defence of the Central Division title in ridiculous manner after a ‘shambolic’ defensive performance saw them throw away numerous leads & finally end up on the wrong end of a 9 goal thriller & all this despite fielding 9 of the players who had performed so impressively for the reserves the previous Saturday!

Although Stowmarket came close to the opening goal in the first few minutes, there were few signs of what was to come in the early stages, when crisp patient passing allowed Woodbridge to continually find good spaces behind the visitor’s defence as Craig Jennings hit the post before DANNY TATUM & Luke Read combined with a 1-2 before the former fired the home team ahead. Within 10 minutes the lead was wiped out when Stowmarket seized on a wayward pass & counter-attacked at pace to maximum effect.

Towards half-time, the vistors looked the most likely to take the lead but were hit by a sucker-punch as Jack Severy released CRAIG JENNINGS, who shot into the top corner to give Woodbridge a half-time lead.

More great approach play from Severy allowed CRAIG JENNINGS to grab his 2nd & Woodbridge’s 3rd goal in the opening minute of the 2nd half, but ‘overplay’, combined with poor decisions by defenders & ruthless finishing saw Stowmarket pull back both goals to tie the game at 3-3 by the hour. Substitute ADAM WEBSTER latched onto a precise pass from Sean Rea within minutes of coming on to put Woodbridge back ahead, but immediately the scores were level again as the Stowmarket goalkeeper’s kick caught out the entire Woodbridge defence & left poor Lewis Rhodes in the Woodbridge goal exposed once more!

While there were still plenty of attacking threats, defensively, Woodbridge looked capable of conceding at any given moment as Stowmarket’s lively front players forced error after error & when a counter-attack resulted in a foul with 3 minutes remaining, Stowmarket, who were the only team to record a victory over Woodbridge throughout last season, repeated history by snatching another late winning goal with a well-struck free-kick.

All credit to Stowmarket for never giving up, despite regularly finding falling behind in the game & for ruthlessly punishing Woodbridge’s mistakes with their finishing. However, a number of the home players must question why they can perform so bravely & give so much effort for the reserves, yet 5 days later they can be so careless, naïve & show a lack of character within the Under 18s?

Team: Rhodes, Lewis, Kempson (Stone 57), Rea, Nicholls, Hammond, Rahman (Mayhew 71), Read (Webster 63), Jennings, Tatum & Severy.

The next Ridgeons League fixture is at Diss next Thursday, but there are two friendlies before then as the Eastern Junior Alliance team take on Grays on Sunday at Gainsborough Sports Centre (2pm kick off) & then the new intake of SETEC 1st years play Rushmere Under 18s on Tuesday under the floodlights at Notcutts Park (7.30pm kick off).