Claire Winter

NHBC's 3rds final home game of the season, played in a slightly surreal fin du siècle atmosphere at a near deserted Lennard Road with almost every other team game at the club cancelled. End of an era for Wynn Roberts too, with (probably) his final game for NBHC after many years and even more goals for the club and its predecessors – his contribution will be remembered by all.

The Cobdown 4s is clearly their development side and they were much improved from the side we beat five nil in the reverse of this fixture in November – there are a lot of them, with coaches and supporters, and obviously a lot has been spent on their perfectly matching kit, but if you don’t play in a tight formation at this level, winning matches is hard.

NHBC 3rds do however play in a tight formation and consequently have only lost three competitive games all season, and were in no mood to lose this one. We started the game confidently and pushed Cobdown firmly back into their half but as always struggled to score against a team with 11 men behind the ball, in spite of having Andy Skipper back for his first game in five months. Gradually however we managed to make progress simply by widening the formation and getting behind the Cobdown defence. The first goal came from precisely that, the ball was moved quickly out of defence, up the right wing, across the goal and onto the stick of Matt Smith who gratefully knocked it home.

For the rest of the half we huffed and puffed, Wynn came on and within a few minutes of his (probably) last appearance was given a ball on the end of his stick which he unluckily knocked against the post. The half time team talk focused on the lack of goals – at only one nil we are always vulnerable. Against Ashford the week before the same thing had happened and they had ragged (literally, their striker clearly kicked the ball in and then celebrated like Maradona, embarrassing) an equaliser in spite of us having 80% possession.
The team talk seemed to work and we went into the second half re-invigorated and Josh scored a well-deserved goal after a few minutes. A second from him seemed to put the game out of reach, but Cobdown were not finished and finally seemed to start playing the ball onto their attackers from deep in midfield. A mix up on the left and a pass to their main striker resulted in Cube rushing out of his goal to kick the ball clear, unfortunately he kicked it straight to their other striker who rounded him and slotted home. Cobdown subsequently got a few short corners but another swift attacking NBHC move enabled Josh to get his hat-trick from Andy's skied shot and the game was over.
No handshakes but congratulations all round, we finish the league a firm third.

First game back of the second half of the season and New Beccs consolidated second place in the league with a decent win against a side that defended for 95% of the 70 minute game. Burnt Ash were on the wrong end of a 6 nil tonking in the reverse of this fixture at HSBC in October, and clearly had damage limitation as their main concern in this game. They defended resolutely and occasionally made a break into our half, but came up against a constant wave of green and yellow.

New Beccs started slowly but started to dominate from about 10 minutes in after the Christmas rustiness had been run off. A low sun in our faces and some poor umpiring became quite frustrating, but we eventually resigned ourselves to both. Nick Williams was picking up the loose balls all over the pitch but Burnt Ash always seemed to have 3 or 4 defenders ready to clear the resulting cross. Leon went close and Phil Cole started to penetrate down the left wing, but we eventually went ahead midway through first half when Wynn expertly dispatched a simple short corner. The good work was undone a few minutes later however, when our defence, who were as desperate as everyone else to score, were dragged too far up field. This had happened at the beginning of the game but when it happened again it resulted in Burnt Ash breaking quickly and scoring in spite of the ball clearly hitting an opposition shin pad and hand in the build up.

The half time score didn’t reflect our domination, and a resolute team talk and some sublime substitutions managed to turn things around in the second half. Jeff Pitcher came on a right back and started to dominate the whole right half area and feed incessant balls to Ewan Williams, who was starting to penetrate the opposition D. This link up and some better shaped defence and long corner routines (we only had 4 shorts all game but must have had at least 25 longs) lead to long periods of New Beccs domination. Phil Cole had missed a couple of sweet chances on the left post (including one disallowed goal which I'm still puzzling about) until he popped onto a goal keeper's error and scoped in from a metre out. The Burnt Ash keeper had played well up until then and had made a number of crucial saves, but I think the incessant pressure finally got to him.

So 2-1 up with 10 minutes to go, we played out the game with some fluent passing and attacking moves, at last finding our rhythm from last year. Burnt Ash had time to get their only short corner of the game, but once we went ahead again there was only going to be one winner in this game.

Final game of the first half of the season and New Beccs were keen to get another win and maintain
pressure on the top of the league, a win today would make it 5 in a row. We only had the bare 11
starting due to drop puts and sickness but it was a strong team particularly down the centre and we
started dominantly and continued that way throughout the match. Cobdown struggled to get out
their half, but defended resolutely and, with a strong keeper, caused New Beccs a few problems in
the first 20 minutes.

The break came when we started to move the ball to the wings and get behind the Cobdown
defence, a move from the back started by Pete Watt and finishing with Nick Williams down the right
slotting across a ball that the overlapping CDM pushed in majestically at the left hand post. A great
team move, but Cobdown still would not admit defeat and with the score at 1-0 at half time they
were still in the game.

Half time team talk focused on the lack of shots and eventually suggested that a few short corners
(we had had none in the first half in spite of circa 75% possession) might change the game. Sure
enough a few minutes into the second half Joe put the ball onto a defenders foot and from the short
James Grey pummelled it home into our favourite bottom left corner. Cobdown heads started to
slump and smiles disappear, as New Beccs continued to attack relentlessly. Another short corner
allowed New Beccs to demonstrate the feared Boris routine and indeed Borys Wowczuk did slot
home a fiercely spinning shot between the keepers legs and a defenders foot. However he had not
taken the ball out the D so it was correctly disallowed.

The 3rd goal wasn’t long in coming though with Matt Smith following up on some neat passing down
the right from Nick Williams and by then Cobdown knew they were going to be well beaten. Borys
did get on the score sheet a few moments later after exploiting the increasing freedom he was being
given by the Cobdown defence, he shot home from the top of the D. The final nail in Cobdown's day
came a few minutes before the end with Joe Furzer, who had run the Cobdown defence ragged all
day, doing a mirror image of Borys's goal. Unfortunately that made the score 5-0, which on paper
looks like a walkover, and the final whistle went before we had time to make it 6-0.

Special mention to Cube in goal, who for the first time in 40 years played an entire game without
touching the ball, and to the left and right backs (Hugh Willoughby and Vince West) who gave the
young Cobdown wingers virtually no possession all afternoon.

New Beccs 3s finish the first half of the season in 2nd place with 7 wins, 1 loss and 1 concession (the
last two over October half term, when we struggled to get a team out). Ignoring the walkover we
have scored 38 goals whilst only conceding 13 – top scorers so far Josh Slater on 8 and Leon Jackson
and Joe Furzer on 5 each.