DANNY DOLAN

THE MANAGER

DANNY DOLAN The Street manager on last few matches, life in the manager’s office and looking ahead to today’s game >>>

Good afternoon and welcome back to Foxcotte Park to you all for today’s Sydenhams Wessex League One game between ourselves and Romsey Town.

I’d like to welcome Adam Pullinger his staff and players and everyone associated with the Town to Foxcotte today. They have started the season well with wins over New Milton Town, Whitchurch, Fleet Town (in the League Cup) and Selsey (in the FA Vase). They did however lose to Folland Sports and suffered another defeat, 2-0 at home to Verwood on Tuesday evening.

We put in a decent performance last Saturday against Totton & Eling. As ever, this was a keenly contested match. Both sets of players and supporters were up for it and I thought 0-0 at half-time was about right. We played quite well, while they had their threats on the rare breakouts.

Having been pleased at the break I thought we started the second half well and we were in the ascendancy. I was pleased with our overall performance and the quality of our goals. Brett’s first was a great set-piece and Mikey’s strike was first class. I felt we fully deserved to record our first home win of the season and was pleased with the overall application and attitude of the players. Then came Andover Town on Tuesday evening. It’s one of those games where I don’t really know how to describe. Andover are a side who will be there or thereabouts and, they have started the season well. On the night we found ourselves 2-0 up without doing too much wrong. We did lose Dockers to injury, which was a blow but had KInge to bring on in place of him.

The second half started in the same vain with us hitting the bar and creating chances, however once Andover Town got back to 2-1 our concentration levels dropped and our decision making was questionable.

But to lose so late in the game and the manner in which we lost it was not acceptable. It was a weird feeling afterwards. I’ve not been involved in a game that has had two players sent-off, two players sin binned and also two questionable penalties.

Scoring two goals at Andover Town should be enough for a team like us not to get beat, and that is disappointing. As a whole team; the squad, the staff and myself we need to take a look at ourselves and ask what we are doing wrong.

Here’s hoping we can make something of our next three home games here and push on. Performances have been improving.

Please get behind your team, let’s move forward together, up the table and here’s to celebrating some good times.

Enjoy the game.

GREAT

THE CAPTAIN’S LOG SCOTT

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Foxcotte Park for another tough game, this time against Romsey Town this afternoon.

It’s been a contrasting week for us after our first home win of the season last Saturday against Totton & Eling was followed by a defeat at neighbours Andover Town on Tuesday night.

Last Saturday against Totton and Eling was Danny and JC’s first league game in charge and was great to start off with a win. We had a very strong squad of 16 players, it was good to see Chris Wing back from his army tour and back in the mix of things, he was quality for us last season and will only strengthen us alongside Paddy and Smithy.

We started the game a little slow and it took us a while to get going, we created some good chances going forward and the defence looked pretty solid as we went into half time at 0-0. The second half started bright for us as we got the early lead with Brett’s first league goal, he then went on to get his second and the whole team was buzzing for the lad. Mikey Davis came on for his home debut and finished the game off with a great finish into the top corner! Unfortunately we finished the game with 10 men as Paddy was sent off for handling the ball outside the area although the linesman should have raised his flag beforehand for an offside. Overall a really good performance from the lads.

On Tuesday night we had the local derby against our neighbours Andover town, we dominated the first half and could of been about 5-0 up at half time but we went in at 2-0 from a quality finish by Danny Urry, then a good header from Kingey just before the half.

We started the 2nd half on a high but unfortunately that only last 10 minutes and concentration levels started to slip away, I won’t go too much into things especially with a few of the decisions made from the man in the middle, but I have to give Town credit where credit is due, they came at us and in the end we just couldn’t contain them.

We have to forget about Tuesday night and go again today when we welcome Romsey and go get another 3 points for the gaffers, it’s another tough game just like every game, a few injuries/suspensions won’t help us but I believe we’ve got a big/strong enough squad for people to fill in for those missing.

I hope you enjoy the game.