It was deja-vu as Grange reprised their last gasp winning performance from 3 days earlier.
Although Chippy was lucky to escape a Red Card on Sunday when his last minute penalty tackle gifted Grange the goal which cost us our grip on The Yabsley he was anyway fated to miss this final as he succumbed to a virus and the last minute team reorganisation was an unwelcome diversion. A MOM performance from Kyle at centreback deserved a winners medal but only papered over the cracks of another inconsistent team performance.
We started with a good tempo and attitude although some poor, or at best, bizarre officiating eventually started to fray at our edges. Darryl and Josh, normally towering in the middle did enough to give us the upperhand in terms of possession but never managed to find that killer tackle, pass, run or shot that often breaks the opposition - it has to be said that both were shackled to some degree by Sunday's efforts and over fussy refereeing.
Jack and Kim did ok but again not enough to turn the screw. Out wide Olli and Sam were like lit touchpapers waiting for the explosion - in Sam's case that happened twice. Around the half hour mark he cut in from the right and unleashed an unstoppable drive into the top corner to give us a 1-0 lead (he did the same in the 2nd half but was denied by the bar). A lack of belief on the part of Grange allowed us to dominate for much of the first half but we were unable to build on Sam's goal and for the 10 or 15 minutes to the interval we gave them a glimpse of a possible way back into the game as we conceded several needless soft free kicks around the edge of the 18 yard box and then failed to defend the resulting free kicks with any real authority.
They started the second half as they finished the first and so did we, conceding a needless freekick within 5 minutes of the restart allowing them a cheap equaliser. The second half was a bit of a see saw and we suffered a couple of killer disruptions, first within 15 minutes of the restart Joel asked to be subbed with stomach problems and then 10 minutes later Josh broke down and asked to come off.
We reorganised and managed to put together a couple of decent periods of play notably when Sam hit the bar and when Kim twice had efforts cleared off the line. Late in the game a chain of poor decisions put us under pressure most notably when the linesman refused to help out the ref when he penalised Kyle after Kyle had been the meat in an old fashioned sandwhich. Eventually we conceded another soft freekick on the edge of the 18 yard box and Revills rush of blood and missed punch ended with the ball in the net.
When we were good we were excellent, some fantastic fluent play down both sides, some magnificent close range stops from Revill, some pulsating runs from Ryan, some great late sweeping from Jack, some vintage front play from Kim, Sam's shots etc etc but it was never enough for long enough and when we continue to make mistakes and poor decisions in dangerous areas we are always likely to be punished we'll try to deal with these on Wednesday
Our good football will only be remembered if its rounded off with a win and a trophy and we have to dig into our back catalogue to remind ourselves that many of our best final victories had to be dug out and were not always pretty.
We've (possibly) got three games to go so let's take them one at a time, give each our best shot and finish the season as winners.
