After thumping the visitors 5-0 last week, Beer Albion Reserves surprisingly had the tables turned on them this time going down 2-0 at home to Halwill Reserves writes Richard Honnor.

With a strong wind blowing straight down the pitch and a hard, bumpy surface underfoot the conditions were not conducive to good football. Halwill deserved the victory simply because they mastered the conditions better than the Fishermen.

For the first 15 minutes Beer were penned in their own half and it was no surprise when Halwill went ahead 1-0 on 14 minutes. The Beer defence failed to get tight on players on the edge of the penalty box as Halwill took a short corner. The pass found the visitor’s midfielder who hit an unstoppable shot across keeper Shaun Gould into the top right corner. Halwill almost went further ahead 2 minutes later when a header was scrambled off the line.

Then Fishermen responded with their best move of the game on 18 minutes when Ross Broome’s shot was desperately cleared away for a corner after a good exchange of passes between Tom Neal and Sam White. From the corner, Broome had a great chance to equalise at the far post but failed to connect cleanly with his header. Thereafter, Halwill dominated the play and keeper Gould kept the home side in the game with a couple of great saves. Sam White did hit the target for the Fishermen from 35 yards on 41 minutes but the effort was comfortably saved by the Halwill keeper. On 42 minutes the visitors went further in front when former Beer player Rory Tucker’s left foot strike from 20 yards squeezed in despite Gould getting a hand to it. Tucker was a handful all afternoon for the Beer defence and was one of the few players on either side who was able to control and pass the ball to feet.

With the wind at their backs, Beer improved in the second half and had most of the possession but could not come up with the elusive goal which would have surely brought them back into the game. Halwill defended stoutly and man-of-the-match centre-back Pete Holland led his back line well and won every aerial challenge. Beer manager Bryan Brown was very disappointed with his team’s performance. “Our control and passing weren’t good enough and our forwards failed to put any pressure on Halwill’s back line”, he said. There were however some decent performances from defenders Lee and Josh Moughton and definite improvement in Beer’s general play when substitutes Chris Long and Adam Brewer entered the fray in the second half.

Next up is a Saturday (March 26) very tough fixture away at Uplowman and will need to up their game considerably to have any chance of upsetting their high-flying opponents.