Report

Friday 18^th May 2012

Buckland Athletic Reserves 3 Watcombe Wanderers 2

(After Extra Time, 2-2 after 90 minutes)

Herald Cup Final.

A crowd of around 400 people gathered at Coach Road on this Friday Night to see Buckland Reserves take on Watcombe Wanderers. The season has already been quite successful for both sides with Buckland finishing runners up in the Premier Division of the SDL and Watcombe winning the league 2 divisions below, but anything can happen on a Cup Final night, so the division advantage made no real difference in Buckland’s eyes but one thing for sure was that Watcombe wanted to retain the Herald Cup and the Buckland squad wanted to be the first side to lift the Herald Cup and bring it home to the Heath.

The starting line-up for Buckland was;

Chris Lanyon, Adam Hawthorn, Ben Clarvis, Christian Pople, Karl Green, Robbie Mills, Chris Mitchell, Carl Roles, Kain Bond, Tom Armstrong and Ben Adams.

And the substitutes were;

Max Leaman, Matt Briant, Martin Brown, Nicky Edmunds, Jacob Scotte-Hatherly, George Denbow and Simon Dungey.

As the game got underway both sides were looking up for the fight and started strongly with even possession but it was Buckland who opened the scoring with only 13 minutes on the clock. Watcombe conceded a free kick out on the left wing which Tom Armstrong took and kicked into the box; Kain Bond arrived at the near post and leapt up above the defenders to head the ball past the Watcombe goalie and into the net. A loud cheer came from the Buckland bench as they knew this early goal could give them a confidence boost and hopefully press forward.

A Further 13 minutes passed and then Buckland made it 2-0 and Ben Adams was the scorer this time, some say the ball got a final touch off team-mate Kain Bond but it’ll go down as a Adams goal on here this meant that with less than half an hour played and Buckland being 2-0 up already, it was now a case of could they hang on and make the margin bigger and the game even harder for their oppositions.

The remainder of the first half saw no more goals but this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for Buckland, their defence was keeping tight and not allowing the quick forwards up front for Watcombe to have a look in at the game. The referee shortly brought an end to the first half and going back into the changing rooms at half time with a 2 goal advantage was ideal for the boys in Yellow.

As play resumed the second half got off to a calmer start with both sides having good midfield possession play with the odd ‘flying’ challenge going in.

The second half was drawing closer and closer to the end but Watcombe were beginning to get themselves into the game and in the 79^th minute they scored their first of the night, a miss-judged header from Karl Green allowed the Watcombe forward to collect the ball and shoot past Chris Lanyon, this now meant a very tense 10 minutes and also a fair bit of injury time to be added on.

To the disappointment of the Buckland supporters, this one goal gave Watcombe a massive buzz and their support were getting right behind them and with this they went onto score a second in the 91^st minute. As the ball rolled into the net the Watcombe supporters went mental in the stand and even one fella thought it was appropriate to run the width of the pitch to congratulate his team.

Buckland had chances to win the game in 90 minutes with both Ben Adams and Chris Mitchell coming close for Buckland in the dying minutes but unfortunately one attempt went over the bar and another was saved by the Watcombe goalkeeper.

The division 2 side saw out the last few minutes and the final was going into extra time which meant at least another 30 minutes of football was going to be played before a winner was decided.

Straight from the whistle to begin extra time Buckland carried the ball forward into the Watcombe half, a ball was knocked in into the path of Kain Bond and he leapt forward to nod the ball past the Watcombe goalkeeper and into the net, apart from 1 or 2 chances this was the first time Buckland had really tested the goalkeeper since the beginning of the second half and now all Buckland had to do was keep their cool for the remaining 29 minutes of extra time.

And to the delight of the Yellow Army they did so, they ran out the first and second halves of extra time without conceding again which meant that they were the new winners of the Herald Cup, this is the first ever Buckland side to life the trophy at only the second time of trying.

The South Devon League representatives carried out the presentation and chose Buckland Number 9, Kain Bond as the man of the match. 2 or 3 other Buckland players could easily have got the award on another night, but well done Bondy!!

The players received their individual medals leaving Captain Karl Green till last and stepped up to collect the Herald Cup trophy, shortly afterwards he was swarmed with the other players celebrating with him and I am lead to believe the celebrating continued long into the early hours of Saturday Morning!!!

Well Done to all of the Players and Management on another successful season and the first squad to lift the Herald Cup for Buckland.

Amy.