They think it is all over…….

And it is.

This will be my final post. After three years of ‘managing’ Parkfield 2nd team, I have decided to hang up my managerial clip board.

But I thought it only right to leave a final update to how the season finished.

After the 5-2 defeat to Coton Green, we put together two decent results. A draw against Old Wulfs, 1-1 after conceding a late equaliser but then a 5-3 victory against Phoenix (a team, previously, we had never got as much as a point from) helped by a hat-trick from Sturridge-Packer. That took us into the big game of the season. Away to Royal Heath, the team bottom of the league and seven points behind us. Having probably the strongest team of the season available, the Parkfield curse hit and despite a hat full of chances we couldn’t get the ball in the back of their net and they caught us with two break away goals.

After that, things went down hill a bit with a number of players deciding to make themselves unavailable for the remainder so we played two of the top teams with weakened teams losing 6-2 to Northfield Village and 4-2 to AG Athletic. Luckily for the Village game I could supplement the team with a few first team players and Chalmers, in goal, didn’t have a save to make. But we just couldn’t score again. But the 0-0 draw gave us the vital point that took us a point clear of Royal Heath. After beating us, they had drawn with Phoenix and then beat Bentley Heath to join us on 12 points for the season.

The following week saw a return match against Northfield Village. Again supplemented by a couple of first teamers it was a very competitive game. One that we probably deserved to earn a further point but a late mistake and clinical finish meant a 1-0 defeat.

The last two games saw another two defeats. 3-1 away to Birch Coppice with another weakened team and then 5-0 against a Silhill team that wouldn’t not look out-of-place in division one.

So the season ended; played 26, won 2, drew 7 and lost 17. My worse season out of the three by far. It is summed up very well by the leading scorer table for the team. Dan Morris 3 (didn’t play after Nov), Ian Chalmers 3 (spent a lot of the season in goal), Pete Sadler 3, Chris Sturridge-Packer 3 (all scored in one game) and me 3.

More positively, the 1st team had a much improved season, winning eight of their final ten games leaving them fifth in the table.

 Anyone still reading?……………….

Catch up

I have to apologise, I have been very slack with updates, as pointed out by my brother in Canada.

So for him, and anyone else who is still reading. ……

Post the Christmas break it has been pretty much hit and miss with matches going ahead, but I hope (fingers crossed) the bad weather has finished for the winter.

So the last report was the 3-1 defeat to Silhill.

The following week we actually got to play on our home pitch rather than over at Rectory park. Playing Meriden we saw out a reasonably uneventful 0-0 draw.

After putting out a stronger side against Meriden we than found ourselves the following week travelling to top of the table AG Athletic lacking several players but with new player Chown. It was an inspired performance, including a string of great saves by stand in keeper Chalmers, that saw us 1-0 up until the last 5 mins. Unfortunately, after two injuries, weakening the team, the pressure took its toll and we conceded a late goal. Another draw. But the first time this season we have gone two games without losing.

The snow and ice meant another two weeks were lost before we played again. A proverbial 6 pointer against Coton Green who were 3 points above us in the league. We probably had the strongest team out of the season and my hopes were high. But we did exactly the same as we did at their place. Conceded four goals in the first 20 minutes. No chance of coming back from that. It ended 5-2 and we probably played the better football.

So we blew our chances of making ground on the teams just above us. Old Wulfs also won that week so the gap increased to six points between us and the teams outside the relegation zone.

Website

I forgot to say before, that the time gained through the number of cancelled games at the start of January was put to good use; I updated the Parkfield AFC website.

Well, actually a little more than updating. More like an overhaul.

We lost the use of the googlepage platform at the end of the year, so I had to seek out a new platform. To be honest the new platform (Moonfruit) offers much better functionality. So I have been able to add some addition pages including a photo gallery.

Feel free to check it out at www.parkfieldafc.co.uk

A game at last.

Back to it; a game at last.

But unfortunately back to usually ways; conceeding a goal within the first five minutes and losing 3-1 to Silhill 4ths.

However after a poor first half and trailing 3-0, we took command of the second half and actually had four or five really good chances to score. Regretably we only took one of those chances.

Bore draw?

With only one win and three draws to our name to date, I was quite happy to take the point from the 0-0 draw against Meriden Athletic on Saturday.

Earlier in the season we took a point away at their place with a 1-1 draw when we should have had the spoils. In this game, the two teams pretty much negated each other out, although of the few chances created Meriden did probably have the better of them.

They are currently sitting third in the table, so it was definitely a bonus to get the point. Even better was to stop the run of conceding a goal in the first 5 minutes of the game, which we had done in the previous six games. It certainly helps confidence.

Another top of the table team next week in AG Athletic.

Off…off….off

I do not think you would be surprised to hear that our games scheduled for 2 Jan, 9 Jan and 16 Jan were all cancelled due to the weather.

That means over a month without been beaten!

Happy New Year – Review of 2009

Happy New Year

Lets hope for a better year; 2009 brought only seven wins and four draws from 31 games.

The start of 2009 brought five wins from ten games (how we could do with that again), but in the final mad four weeks of the 2009-10 season we had to play eight games in which we lost all but one.

But we had done enough to retain division five status for 2009-10.

Unfortunately the first team did not fare as well. Going the whole of 2008-09 season without winning a league game saw them finish rock bottom of division one and relegated to division two for 2009-10.

Heathy, the first team manager, under took a rebuilding process during the closed season and early part of the new season. This is now starting to pay dividend with a 5-0 win  in their last game before Christmas. They sit relatively comfortable in mid table with 14 points from 12 games.

White off

Not surprisingly no game today due to the weather. The City Council called off all games on their pitches yesterday. But I doubt any games will be going ahead.

We were due to play top of the table, Northfield Village, but I did have out my strongest team of the season to date. Walsh, Timmins and Downing along with new boy Woodcock were all playing.

We get a weeks break for Christmas. No game on Boxing day, but we do have a game on 2 January.

Merry Christmas

Better

Saturday took us away to Phoenix; The only team in our league that we have failed to gain any points against in our previous meetings.

Unfortunately, the trend continued. However there was at least a much improved performance. Mainly due to new player Woodcock adding some fight into centre midfield and Walsh being back from university.

For the third consecutive game we conceeded a weak goal early in the game. But for the remainder of the half we more than held our own, confidence slowly returned and we had a couple of good chance to equalise. 

Into the second half and it was still pretty even. But with 15 minutes to go we conceded poor second goal from a corner which virtually killed off the game. JP did finish well to give us slight hope but a long range third gave Phoenix the final say and a 3-1 win.

So, better….. but the addition of Woodcock shows that we are going to need to strengthen the squad if we are going to pull ourselves away from the relegation zone. We are now half way through the season, played 13, and only have 6 points. We probably need to quadruple  that total to stay up. That means finding 6 wins from somewhere!

Bare 11

A managers nightmare -Five minutes before the scheduled meeting time receiving a phone call from one of your players saying that they are stuck in traffic in the city centre and that they will not be able to make it when you only had 12 players.

Things got worse when we arrived at the away ground. No access to the changing rooms.

In addition, the referee to close to cancelling the match due to the state of the pitch.

But we took the view that since we had got this far we might as well play the game.

Four weeks earlier we had beat the opposition, Bentley Heath, one-nil. However I was not so positive after 5 minutes when we were already one-nil down. But things then started to look up. I got the slightest flick on a free-kick to score the equaliser and we looked like the better team. Then JP won a penalty. But the penalty spot was a quagmire and JP’s spotkick was unfortunately saved. 

Just before half time Bentley Heath took the lead with a deflected shot from outside the box but virtually from the kick-off we were awarded our second penalty. This time Timmins stepped up and converted. 

So the second half started level at 2-2, but we struggled to keep any possession and Bentley Heath took control of the game. They scored a third but after having a goal disallowed we did get our third penalty. Timmins stepped up again but this his kick was saved. However he managed to convert the rebound. So 3-3. I had hopes that we might get a point out of the game. They did not come true.

In essence the difference between the two teams was Bentley Heath’s striker. Quick, skillful and clinical.  He had already scored the second goal and set up the third. Guess what, he then single-handedly set up the fourth.  

 They scored a fifth, so it finished 5-3.

I guess when you get three penalties and only score one, you can not expect to be winning games.