Late On Leighton
- Darren Holmes
- Jul 30, 2024
- 3 min read
Monday, July 29 . Pre-season Friendly
Yate Town 2 (Christopher 49, Jackson 56)
Tiverton Town 2 (Parker 20, L Thomas 84)
Lodge Road . 7.45pm
I THINK we can use the term 'friendly' loosely as we are now at the business end of pre-season. This was a full-blooded encounter between Yate Town, who will play their football in the division below us but had no fewer than four players in their match-day squad that plied their trade in National League South last season, and Yellows, who complete preparations for the 2024-25 campaign on Saturday with the visit of Torquay to Ladysmead.
It was Tivvy who made the better start. With the dynamic running of Jay Murray down the Bluebells' right, the central three of Matt Britton, Asa Hall and Jeff Forkuo, and the hardworking Javan Wright causing problems on the other side, we were winning the midfield.
Joe Parker was hurrying the Yate backline and their goalkeeper and looked to have shrugged off the virus he played with on Friday. On eight minutes, a powerful, dipping effort from just over 20 yards out by Forkuo crashed back off the crossbar.
For around 25 minutes, Tiverton were dominant, forcing a string of corners, with Murray, the taker, delivering some brilliant balls into the danger area.
From one of those corners, two Yate markers attempted to deal with the physical threat of Josh Jones, who bravely headed back under intense pressure and Parker jumped to front of the queue that consisted of him and Britton and pounced to give us the lead.
That goal happened in the 20th minute and although Yate did come more into it in the latter stages of the half, the Yellows created two more chances to score. A flick header attempted by Asa Hall found the net but was ruled out for offside, and Parker was played in but dragged his shot fractionally wide.
A shot palmed away by Joel Manning was the closest the hosts came to scoring in the first half, but it was very much different following the interval. Yate were in the ascendancy as the vastly experienced ex-EFL man Lloyd James was a second-half substitute and started to pull the strings.
Playing at a high tempo, the Bluebells stretched us down our left with some swift passing movements and on 49 minutes, Christopher levelled things up.
Things got worse for us with 56 minutes on the clock when, with our hosts clearly in the ascendancy, former Weston and EFL striker Marlon Jackson let fly from the edge of the box and beat Manning.
The home side were finding spaces all over the park and were starting to open us up regularly.
On 59 minutes, Dylan Jones who got vital minutes in the bank in his first start since the Exeter City game, went off along with Hall and they were replaced by Kyle Anderson and Theo Jeremy. In the 68th minute, Leighton Thomas entered and Joe Parker departed.
The Yellows were 70 minutes into their fourth game in 10 days as a drinks break was called. When the teams resumed, they regained the ascendancy with the overlapping Thompson in full flow. An inviting cross in was met by Leighton Thomas’s head as he powerfully headed to the corner, only to be denied by the post.
Then a very late tackle on the elusive Murray was ignored, an obvious Tiverton corner was finally given after initially being awarded as a goal-kick, and then, when Thompson combined with Thomas again in driving the ball back from the bye-line for the ex-Yate man to fire home, an extremely puzzling offside flag was raised. Thomas had run past his marker to get on the end of the cross after the ball was pulled back. Ben Gerring was shown a red card for his protests over accumulative dubious decisions from the officials.
The combination of Thompson and the seriously unfortunate Thomas did finally get their just rewards when another ball cut back from Thompson was prodded home by the lively Cayman Islander.
This was a stern test against a strong and talented Yate side and one that should definitely make us more battle hardened when the new campaign begins.
For the players, their last chance to impress in pre-season will be on Saturday afternoon, when Torquay United come to town.
