Bury Town 4 City 0

Eastern Junior Alliance: Sunday 18th April 2010

Today was the short trip up the A14 to Bury St Edmunds for a vital league match.

There was no James Howard who was still out injured and Shaun Flack also had a slight niggle and it was decided not to risk him.

We lined up as follows:
BRANDON, MARTIN, GUY, SPENCER (c), SAPSFORD, YOUNGS, HOBSON, DRISCOLL, NICHOLSON, DARLING, POOLEY. subs : WRIGHT, BROWN, WYMAN

We started in good fashion with NICHOLSON and YOUNGS giving good width to our play. In fact in the opening 15 minutes we looked confident and were causing the home side lots of problems. HOBSON and DRISCOLL were dominating in the middle and when those two combined POOLEY was thwarted by the Bury keeper.

GUY was supporting the ever threatening NICHOLSON and it just seemed a matter of time before we opened the scoring. HOBSON's cross/shot also went close. Bury began to pull themselves back into the game, but most of their efforts came from distance. BRANDON looked comfortable with the high ball and SAPSFORD as ever was winning most things in the air at the back.

Just before the break a mistake at the back let in a home striker, but a combination of SAPSFORD and BRANDON forced him wide and the chance went begging.

H/T Bury Town 0 City 0

With the 2nd half barely 5 minutes old we fell behind. A Bury forward having time to take the ball down and finish well from the edge of the box. Take nothing away from the finish, but the time and space given was what caused our downfall. We tried to comeback and NICHOLSON went close at the other end.

13 minutes in and Bury doubled their lead. A classy finish from the decent No.9 who had a fine half. A further mistake a couple of minutes later saw us fall further behind. BROWN then replaced POOLEY and DRISCOLL joined DARLING up front. BROWN to his credit added a bit of determination to the side. A cross by MARTIN was headed over by DARLING and a YOUNGS corner was headed just over by SAPSFORD. A great run by NICHOLSON saw him beat a couple of defenders, but his cross rolled across the line with no one adding the finish.

WYMAN then replaced GUY and BRANDON in goal made way for WRIGHT. Skipper SPENCER tried to rally his team, but to no avail as another good strike from the edge of the box beat the dive of WRIGHT. We still could have got some reward when DRISCOLL's fine run set up DARLING, but he just couldn't get enough on the ball to finish.

F/T Bury Town 4 City 0

The boys first league defeat and a heavy one at that. The result doesn't tell the whole story, but Bury deserved this win. The way we started, it looked like we would win comfortably, but the home side changed the way they were playing and we got punished.

Next Sunday will see us have a chance of revenge as Bury visit Milton Road for the return fixture. It’s times like this you see what the lads are made of and as we all know for every winner there is a loser. I'm confident they will bounce back in 7 days time as we had enough chances to win 2 or 3 games today.

Finally it was great to see four of the boys make their 1st team debuts in midweek. Shaun Flack, Joey Nicholson, Luke Youngs and George Darling played the whole 90 minutes against Mildenhall Town and rose to the occasion. Thanks to all the support they received it was very much appreciated.

Cambridge City Boys Section