Tough day at the office for the Academy

Sorry this isn't not going to be the usual journalistic master piece this week as Gary was on playing duty elsewhere. Saturday saw another tight hairpin in this season's learning curve for the Academy. We started brightly enough, with some neat passing between Sam, Ian and Rob Sanders creating 2 opportunities in the Basildon D in the first 10 minutes. Unfortunately they both fell to Chris, the first one pulled wide of the far post, when squaring it to Jake might have been the better choice. The less said about the rushed first time air shot for the second opportunity the better.
Then things started to get messy, Basildon took advantage of some quick break away ball to by-pass our midfield and put their centre forward away. The result was a short corner, and messy was about to get messy and painful. Rob Musk was out quickly but could only deflect the well struck shot towards Boothies' right hand post, where Roffe bravely saved it with his face! Whilst it always seems a bit harsh, that was always going to end in a penalty stroke, which once Roffe had received some repairs, Basildon tucked away with some aplomb.
I think the shock of seeing Roffe felled somewhat put us off our stride and our usual passing game went completely to pot, in the main we were trying the right passes, but our execution was pretty woeful. Basildon were not going to pass up turn over ball in midfield and took advantage of nearly every mistake by earning short corner after short corner, we defended them pretty well but eventually Basildon then converted one. The half ended with another long ball from Basildon and an absent midfield leaving the Brentwood defence overloaded and scrabbling, the result, an attempted clearance from Ian that turned into a smart deflected finish that Boothie could do nothing about.
The second half was much better, we kept a bit more shape and structure, and whilst our passing accuracy wasn't up to normal standards it was a marked improvement on the first half. We put Basildon under pressure, had some nice passing interchanges, Darshan, Doug and Sam showing the adult midfield how to find each other with simple passing. Fraser worked hard at the back and gave very little away. Max showed real calmness in the D to earn us a short corner. The result of that was Ian again hitting the back of the net - which was a problem as it was a fierce strike which needed to be hitting the back board to count.
Basildon were still looking dangerous on the break, luckily they didn't look to dangerous with any of their second half short corners. I think on balance we were on top, and managed to get a deserved goal. Ian found space at the top of the Basildon D from a short range free hit, turned unopposed and forced the keeper into a save. The partial clearance only went as far as Isaac who made no mistake with a one touch finish. We definitely edged the second half and I think had Basildon a bit rattled for a while, but never really looked like closing the gap they'd opened up in the first half. 1 - 3 the final score, and I'm pleased to say Roffe's cheek whilst being a swollen, painful and colourfully bruised advert for short corner face masks was fortunately un-fractured.

The Man of the Match vote had a few nominees. Certain members of the defensive union lent their vote to Roffe. Luckily the rest of the squad have more sense than to reward being run ragged for ten minutes, giving away a P stoke and then warming the bench for the rest of the game with any sort of award. Fraser and Sam both picked up nominations for their usual solid performances in very difficult circumstances, but this week's vote over whelmingly went to Isaac for some nice attacking runs and a super reaction finish for his first goal of the season.

Team: Richard Booth (gk), Ian Anderson, Sam Anderson, Max Bakal, Darshan Gandhi, Fraser McLauchlan, Isaac Minor, Chris Minor (c), Doug Muncey, Rob Musk, Jamie Robinson, Simon Roffe, Rob Sanders, Jake Sanders.
Goal: Isaac Minor