Narrow defeat but...

As Alan Hansen may have not said in 1995 "you can't win anything with kids but that doesn't really matter because we will see the benefit in the end". Unfortunately youthful Kettering were on the wrong end of a 1-0 defeat in Fenland.
The first positive was the pitch - my, what a beauty. Best pitch we've played on in a long while, certainly not the mud heap of previous season. (Note to Wisbech - splash out on a decent path to keep it clean)
The first negative was the traffic - lots of tractors. The second negative was the clubhouse - for our older readers think our old wooden clubhouse. How can the cricket score hut be of a sounder construction than the clubhouse?
We had a squad of 13 including 7 under 18s and two 14/15 year old debutants ( Ellis and Joe) with established older players to direct operations.

The game started with Wisbech having plenty of ball and creating a couple of chances that were comfortably dealt with and Kettering were fine knocking the ball about. A harsh short corner was conceded and eased away and a similar cheap short corner was won by us ( both for not being 5) which we squandered. A Wisbech chap saw green for not retreating ( how many times??) and Brookesy saw green for an ill timed tackle.
A burst down their right saw a Wisbech attacker hit a well placed shot off the inside of the far post giving veteran keeper Barry no chance. Without really troubling the hosts Kettering kept in the game. Young Ellis doing a trojan amount of work in midfield and Joe looking composed at right back and linking well with Haydn.
Half time saw Kettering regroup and we were sent out for the second half with some choice words from coach Hawkins ringing in our ears.
In fairness we never really threatened their goal in the second half but the game was finely balanced as Wisbech couldn't put us away as first Brookesy then a completely unaware Joe ( "saw it all the way" - yeah right) made goal line saves and keeper Barry rolled back many years to produce a virtuoso performance reminiscent of his pomp back in 1743. With a couple of minutes to go we counter attacked and you wondered whether it might be one of those days. It wasn't.
Lots of positives. This young team will improve massively from this narrow defeat to the fledgling league leaders. Good news on Hawkins Snr injury that he will be back mid November for the odd cameo.
The showers looked like the ones that might electrocute you. They didn't.
Tea was sausage, mash and Yorkshire puddings.
Man of the match Joe. DoD Brookesy for his green card ( bit of a bandwagon decision and quite harsh as it was difficult to find any obvious winners).
We abandoned a scheduled drinks stop in The Cock as the rugby was on so we decamped to the club for an in depth discussion about what has turned into Teagate. Is a buffet acceptable?? I fear this will run and run.

#keepitclean #buffetnono #fixthatfloor #bringonstives