Tiverton Town v Walton Casuals Report

A draw, one loss and a win preceded the Yellows before today’s opponents; Walton Casuals who before kickoff, sat only one place above us in the league and also happened to be our final opposition of the 20/21 season before the Southern League was curtailed after only seven games last October.

Both teams searching for their second win of the season but this performance would turn out to be far from the 5-0 victory at our last meeting on home soil. Tiverton should have also been confident having never previously losing to the Stags. An early ball from Belsten gave the home fans hope setting Simpson free but the ball was just too strong and was calmly collected by Forster and really would be his last meaningful action of the first half. The Yellows looked unsettled by Waltons strength and pace, Williams failing to clear an early back pass and the visitors almost capitalised only for the shot to go high over. Moments later a long throw in from O’Halloran fell to a scramble in the box and somehow eventually crept passed Williams far post.

The visitors always looked more likely to score and on 19’ Gough rose highest to header from a Walton corner and powerfully fired passed Williams. Tiverton looked lost and unable to gather any real momentum, struggling with the visitors pace down the two wings and with no real sign of an equaliser, when Olaf Kaszola found space to shoot just on halftime, the shot high and over pretty much summed up our opening 45 minutes.

The Stags got the second half underway but already Tiverton looked brighter. Dan Hayfield finding Koszela in the box with a great cross which was cleverly flicked goalwards straight at Forster. Any hopes of an equaliser were dashed moments later, a poorly headed clearance by Pond was quickly pounced upon by Liddle who calmly fired home the visitors second. With the outlook looking bleak, Rogers made three changes, bringing on fresh legs in the form of Wright, Morison and Woodman to introduce new ideas and to try and break down a well organised team. It’s fair to say it worked, almost instantly creating options and a looking more of a threat. Koszela’s cross finding Wright at the back post who headed straight at Forster.

Finally the breakthrough came on ‘75, the Yellows with a corner met by a goalmouth scramble eventually falling to Kaszola firing home and giving the home fans hope of a point. A few ‘half chances’ fell to Tiverton to equalise, Hayfield’s cross just underneath Forsters crossbar but no one was able to get the final and important touch. However a moment “of madness” would end Woodmans afternoon, initially being shown a yellow for a tackle to then be shown a further yellow seconds later for dissent and given his marching orders. An afternoon the Yellows will want to quickly forget as they travel to Weston-super-Mare on bank holiday Monday.