Braintree 4’s – 1 Brentwood Academy – 3

Early morning start at Braintree as the Academy looked to get their league campaign back on track. Couple of defeats needed to be addressed and the weaker of the two Braintree sides in our league appeared to be as good a place as any to get the band back on the road.

This was a decent performance from us. Not perfect by any means but better all round. We dominated the game really from the start. We held the majority of possession and most of that in attacking areas. Braintree though are no mugs or pushovers. They have an experienced back line that defended manfully throughout. I think what was most pleasing was the way we stuck to our task and the variety we showed in our attacking movements. We went, through the middle, sometimes short passing, sometimes we went longer. It really was wave after wave of attacking but it was done so on the back of a solid shape so on the rare occasions we were threatened and in the first half it was mainly on the break, we had personnel in the right places to block and fill the gaps.

It did take what seemed like an age to break through but as is so often the case, one became two reasonably quickly. Rob Sanders and Nick Edwards both on target.

It felt comfortable at that stage but of course the Academy don’t tend to do easy to often. Braintree on a rare incursion got one back. It was a slightly strange one. They worked the ball into the D, the Braintree attacker taking a shot. He seemed to hit it into the ground and the ball popped up, looking for all the world as if it was going to clear the goal crossbar by some distance before looping down into the net. I think you could try that a thousand times and fail to get the same result. 2-1 at half time and whilst we had clearly been on top work still required.

And that work got done. The second half followed a similar pattern, if perhaps Braintree had slightly more of the ball. We continued to work through chances. Most notable an excellent piece of play involving good passing and moving was almost finished off by Isaac on his reverse. So close. It wasn’t long after that we got the third, again nice play. Free hit just outside the D, taken quickly by me as I could see James moving into space, he takes the ball at pace, Nick Edwards has moved into space, nice ball and leaves Nick to finish accurately. Teams higher up then Braintree would have struggled to defend that.

3-1 and Braintree started to dominate possession, but not really territory. As a midfield we were able to sit back and let them play in front of us. Braintree played a very direct straight-line hockey, I never felt they worked us around or looked to change the point of attack. They perhaps had a few chances to create something but it never materialised as we saw out the game for a good win. Credit to Braintree on the post-match hot dogs – currently front runner in my ‘teas of 2024’ league.

Team: Richard Booth, Fraser McLauchlan, Ian Anderson, Rob Musk, Chris Minor, James McKay, Nick Edwards, Gary MacDonnell, Rob Sanders, Sam Anderson, Isaac Minor, Max Bakal, Frank Edwards.

Man of the Match: Tough one this. Votes spread across a number of players which perhaps is indicative of a good team performance. But Isaac Minor wins the tier breaker. He is taking up good positions and was so unlucky not to score.