Men's 4s vs Tamworth 2

This week Telford 4ths travelled for a tough match against Tamworth 2nds, who were 2nd in the League, having lost only 2 matches and winning all 5 home games.

Andy Pynegar and Ben Stevens played their 1st 4ths game of the season.

Before the match Chris advised Tamworth were a physical team and Telford needed to match that physicality. He also stressed the need for fast, accurate passing.

Telford started well, holding their own defensively, whilst putting together good attacking moves.

Telford took the lead when left-back Sukhtaj was given the ball inside the opposition half. He drove at the opposition and passed the ball to John at the top of the D. John reversed it into the right-corner of the Tamworth net for his 7th goal of the season.

Unfortunately, within 10 minutes Tamworth equalised. A second quickly followed and Tamworth made it 3-1 with a 3rd goal within 15 minutes of Telford scoring. All 3 goals were similar with the ball blasted into the D where forwards controlled the ball and hit strong low shots past Brad.

Telford may have been distracted by some awful umpiring decisions, but he wasn’t involved in the Tamworth goals.

At half-time Chris told the team not to get upset by the umpiring and Telford needed to stop Tamworth blasting the ball into the D.

2nd half saw Telford under a lot of pressure. With baffling umpiring decisions Telford conceded a string of short corners and hits just outside the D. However, the defence held firm and Brad made good saves when needed.

Telford did have attacking moments when allowed by the umpire. They won short corners and did score when, in a goal mouth scramble John got the ball to Andy, who put the ball into the net from a few yards out. The fair umpire gave the goal and Telford were back ready for the re-start when the awful umpire over-ruled the decision, disallowing the goal because of a Telford foot. The umpire had been prompted by Tamworth forwards telling him the ball had hit a Telford foot. They were further from the action than the umpires, who hadn’t picked it up!

The score stayed at 3-1 and the match ended with Telford attacking through a couple of short corners they couldn’t convert.

Overall, a good performance.

Aaron picked up a green card for using an expletive, which when used by Tamworth players received no sanction. His penalty time seemed much longer than the time served by the carded Tamworth player.

Chris applauded the team for keeping their cool, defending well and keeping their shape. Andy was MOTM.

The one umpire was probably the worst the 4ths had suffered this year. A Tamworth coach admitted the umpiring was always bad. On the evidence of this match Telford got all the poor decisions. They got penalised for doing things Tamworth weren’t punished for.

You might say Tamworth’s 100% home record is due to having a 12th man in one of the umpires.