Devlin Wins It Late In Game Of Absolute Madness

Every so often you get a game of football that is absolute carnage however it's becoming the norm for us now whenever we visit Barnham Drive. We went into today's encounter without arguably our first choice front three and confirmation that Alex McDonald is unlikely to play again this season which is a huge blow. What we didn't expect was for our keeper Joe Wilson to last just 10 seconds before having to be replaced in goal by Jay Boner. Wilson's ankle injury was the trigger for a series of non-stop madness. It did give an opportunity for new signing Mohamed Harich the opportunity to make his debut much earlier than he or anybody else had expected. Paddy Clegg's superb long ball found Ethan Danku who's first touch was immaculate and his finish was just as good to give us the lead after just 3 minutes. Childwall struck back just 6 minutes later before Zico Williams' cross/shot restored our lead. Credit must go to the home side, they could sense the nervous start we had made due to the unsettled issues we were faced with and they raced into a 3-2 lead before this was made worse when Sam O'Neill had to go off for treatment on a knock to his ankle which left us with a centre back pairing of Dan Edge and Joel Crookes. A free-kick awarded to us in the 22nd minute gave Ben Devlin the opportunity to get us level again and his sweet left foot strike was perfect, nestling into the far bottom corner for his first ever competitive goal for the club. Some will say that has been long overdue for a player who's been at the club for 4 seasons. Defensively we were at sixes and sevens and we were being pressed and forced into errors that saw us trail at half time 5-3.

We addressed the issues at the break and in the second half we pulled together showing huge character and our patience paid off when Kaleb Sweeney's header made it 5-4 following a superb cross down the right from Samson Aboiro. Danku was sin-binned then red carded for foul & abusive language with just over 15 minutes to go and our task looked so much harder as we run the risk of pushing on too much and being done on the counter attack. Childwall however had put a lot into the game and fatigue kicked in. Sweeney's goal had also given us a huge lift and Sam O'Neill's cameo up front worked a treat. We were forced to go more direct in the hope of salvaging at least a point. That was achieved in the 85th minute when Williams levelled with a well taken finish and mission impossible was complete when O'Neill's flick on found Williams who was the coolest man on the pitch to find Devlin who ran onto his well timed pass to poke home past the keeper. It capped off a crazy game of football but enabled us to get a vital 3 points in our continued push for a top 3 finish.