Crawley Down Res. 1  Northwood Res. 0

Saturday 5th November 2011

Northwood Res.		Suburban League Haven Centre, Crawley Down
Mitch Swain	1	Kick Off
Michael Williams	2	3.00 p.m.
Ryan Phillips	3	H/T
Corey Ellis	4	0-1
Doug Fitzgerald	5	Scorers
Jamie Tomkins	6	Northwood
Julian Smith	7	-
Dominic Franklin	8
Ghislaine Yoro	9
Charlie Barker	10
Yassine Fehmi-Gil	11
Callum Wright (10)	12
Lamin Cole (6)	14
-	15
-	16
-	17

On a heavy and long grassed pitch, the reserves resumed their season after a three week break. With two starting debutants and two more on the bench, there was an air of optimism pre-kick off.

Indeed, this was continued into the match with some rather neat football from Northwood, especially down their left flank with full back Ryan Phillips attacking at every oppurtunity and linking very well with Yassine Fehmi-Gil, both of whom caused real problems for Crawley.

After 17 minutes a smart move saw Ghislain Yoro with only Seb Boss, the home keeper, to beat, but his shot was disappointing and easily saved. For the first 20 minutes Crawley looked second best, however, in the 25th minute new boy Corey Ellis, playing a sweeper role for Northwood looked to be fouled and consequently lost possession. Two passes later, Brett Caiger had thumped the ball past Mitch Swain, who rightly gave an accusing look to fullback Michael Williams, who had reacted too slowly.

Following this setback, Northwood seemed to lose their way, with the central midfield pairing of Dominic Franklin and Jamie Tomkins failing to create and a number of players losing possession at regular intervals. This malaise was punctuated by a run from Julian Smith playing wide on the right, making a determined run through the middle and forcing the save of the match from Boss.

The early part of the second half was much the same, with neither keeper having much to do. In the 60th minute, Under 18s player Callum Wright replaced the disappointing Charlie Barker and this seemed to inject some urgency into the front line with his more forceful runs.

Ten minutes later another youngster, Lamin Cole, came on for Tomkins and he became involved in nearly every attacking play. This is what had been missing, a player willing to take responsibility and try to find the correct pass, not all of them found their target, of course, but it had the desired effect and Northwood finished the game as they had started, looking the better team but not able to find the net.