Witton Albion JFC

The third league fixture of the season took us on our travels again, this time to Congleton to play Vale Juniors Congleton U12 Bears. We were fortunate with the weather too with the game played in dry conditions in between two periods of heavy rainfall.

Vale Bears are a team who we have played on many occasions over the years. Vale may be considered to be one of our bogy sides, against whom we often fail to get a positive result and we have been on the wrong end of some rather unflattering score lines.

The early exchanges in the game were fairly equal with much of the play in the midfield as both teams tried to gain authority. The game kicked in to life in the seventh minute with a great passing move by Witton concluding with Harry putting an angled shot just wide of the oppositions goal.

However, Vale were the team to strike first, scoring a goal in the ninth minute following a well worked attack involving several passes through their midfield.

Going one down, the Warriors upped the tempo of the game which brought a period of sustained pressure on the oppositions goal. In the thirteenth minute a blistering shot by Ewean was met with a superb diving save from the Vale keeper, who pushed the ball around the post for a Warriors corner. This led to a series of goal threatening corners and the eventual equalising goal. The oppositions defence clearing the ball out of their box straight to Cathal, who had positioned himself perfectly to bring the ball under control and with a looping shot was able to score from distance.

The remainder of the first half continued generally with Witton on the offensive but with no addition to the score.

Half Time 1:1.

The second half continued much as the first half had ended with the Warriors looking like the team most likely to score. A corner kick by Harley was flicked on by Callum to an unmarked Harry at the far post to allow him to ram home our second goal.

The second half saw the Warriors play some exciting attacking possession based football (which Pep Guardiola would have been proud off) with Vale Bears push back into their own half for extended periods. However the finishing was not quite as good with many opportunities created and missed unfortunately. The pace of the Witton players was a constant problem for the Vale team and Liam in particularly ran clear on goal on a number of occasions.

The missed chances were to come back an haunt us. With just three minutes remaining and Witton pushing forward, we were caught on the counter attack with Vale equalising.

Final score 2:2.

Whilst there was some frustration with the drawn the game, we should take the positives from an excellent team performance. Any disappointment coming from a change in expectations which is a measure of the progress of the team generally.

Man of the match was a player who was asked to play in a slightly different position for this game, worked hard throughout and capped off a good performance with a goal. Well done Cathal!

The next game sees us on the road again to play Tytherington Juniors U12 AFC at Macclesfield Academy next Sunday. Hopefully Cheshire East will have the cutters out this week so we don’t play on a pitch with excessively long grass, that we have experienced over the last two weekends.