Reserves match report

Redditch Reserves v Loughborough Dynamo Reserves

After a good win at Barwell and the new manager beginning to stamp his footprint on the team it was important we continued to show signs of improvement against a side who had won there last 5 games. The pitch was very heavy from the poor run of weather we have had and knew the passing game we normally play was going to be difficult.
Redditch started fast with barely 5 touches of the ball from the kick off before Reds striker Jamie Gifford found himself in acres of space in the Loughborough 18 yard box but just dragged his shot wide. Gifford was causing the 3 man defense of Loughborough all sorts of problems and it wasnt long before he got his rewards. Some good initial play from Craig Malins and Tom Hurdman saw Gifford get the ball and from the second time of asking, slotted home to give the Reds a 1 - 0 lead.
This really gave the lads a lift and again with good interlink play from Hoshain Gabbidon, Tom Busby and Kaine Palmer, Malins found himself one on one with the keeper. His first effort the keeper spread his body well but the ball came back to Malins who slotted the ball home to the delight of the Redditch supporters.
2 - 0 and you could see and hear the Loughborough players getting on each others backs. Redditch continued to play the way they had begun and found themself in another goal scoring oppurtunity when the referee awarded us a free kickaround 20 yards out. Up stepped Tom Busby who cooly slotted home his free kick to make it 3 - 0 with 15 minutes to go.
With thoughts of another big win coming I continued to drive the lads on but a big problem occured after 32 minutes. Gifford, who had looked dangerous all game, had rolled his ankle and couldnt recover from the pain he was getting. This forced me into a early substitution replacing Gifford with Adrian Hylton. For whatever reason, this kick started off Loughboroughs game and they really started to push us further and further back towards our own goal. Some solid defending from ex villa academy star Seb Jenkins and also along side him Scholesy, Chris Hill and Dan Hayes, they tried to keep a clean sheet until half time but as football has its way, a freak 30 yard shot from the Dynamo player just beat Danny Payne at his near post.

HT 3 - 1

My half time team talk was quite basic. We knew Loughborough would come out all guns blazing, and all we had to do was keep compact as a unit and match them like for like. Unfortunately we came out and did completely the opposite. Dynamo had a new lease of life and from the first whistle pressed and pressed. Everything we did resulted in a mistake which Dynamo capitalised on. Fortunately for us we had Danny Payne in goal. Danny had been lacking in a lot of confidense prior to myself taking over the reserves and after a bad first game under me he has got to where I knew his was. His presense in goal in the second half was fantastic with a number of world class saves and im pleased to say was in thorn in Dynamos side. With 2 fairly easy second half chances missed by Loughborough the final whistle came and saw Redditch win 3 out of there 4 games under myself.

FT 3 - 1

Our next game is away to the unbeaten Quorn FC Reserves and will be a big test for myself and the lads to get a result. We then face Quorn again on the 15th of December at the valley and welcome all along to support.

Regards

Justin

Justin, many thanks. A fantastic match summary. Very well done. Enjoy reading it.

in2thevalley wrote:Justin, many thanks. A fantastic match summary. Very well done. Enjoy reading it.

+ 1. Top result and well done, keep the match reports coming.

Batsey, maybe we could have a match reports area?

Excellent, this is the kind of thing that is going to increase fan's interest in the club at many levels. Great report

Who is this Hoshain Gabbidon? Any relation of Danny Gabbidon (Crystal Palace, probably fair now to say ex-Wales), or Nore Gabbidon (ex-Bumsgrove keeper, was in their side when we beat them 4-0 at their place, Boxing Day 2000)? I'm guessing more likely to be the latter...