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There were few worries about who to leave in and out of the line up for manager Weekes this weekend, as 11 Brightwell players were present, meaning everyone played. This meant a couple of unusual positional placements, most notably Sid Trinders was in goal, Dan Hartley in the centre of midfield and Gareth Pritchard up front.

Having no subs meant that the players wished for a cool, typically Autumn day…. What they got was a warm sunny day, that had been missing for most of the summer. Fortunately Didcot didn't appear to have any subs either, so both teams were left to struggle for the full 90 minutes.

Brightwell started well, and had a couple of early chances, before the unlikely source of Alfie Hall put them ahead. A floated free kick was allowed to travel right to the far post where it crept into the corner of the net. Hall claimed to have meant it but some of the squad had doubts, nevertheless it was a good free kick regardless of any luck involved. After that the game settled down into an end to end battle. The Red Lion strikers were struggling to get any long balls, but they were having success with Lloyd on the left and Rich on the right constantly getting past the full backs. Twice Lloyd managed to get to the by-line and cut the ball back for chances that just evaded the attacking players. At half time Brightwell led 1-0 anyway and after a well earned rest came back for the second half.

In the second half the referee appeared to have lost patience with the game and decided to book Gunston for a reasonably innocuous foul on the halfway line. However, Brightwell then doubled their advantage when a cross found it's way across to Rich who fired across goal and the pony-tailed defender just nipped in ahead of Gaz to slide the ball home.

The referee clearly felt the need to liven up the game however, and after Nick had been involved in a rough tackle on the edge of the area, he played on and then awarded a very, very dubious penalty when Euthie challenged for the ball. Sid was booked for his protests, and then was unlucky not to save the penalty as he went the right way for it.

Brightwell tried to get back into focus but this wasn't helped when Gunston reacted to a challenge and the referee awarded a second yellow card to him thereby reducing them to ten men. This meant more running for increasingly tired players, and Sid had to make a couple of good saves from long range shots. However Brightwell were still creating chances and Gav and Rich were unlucky when put through. The defending was excellent, and Brightwell were rewarded for their work when a long throw on the left was flicked on at the near post to an unmarked Dan Hartley who placed a shot into the top corner to give a 2 goal advantage once more.

After that the Didcot heads went down, and the game meandered to a conclusion with just a couple more yellow cards randomly given to Didcot players. An excellent performance from all concerned!