SWPL Prem Div Stoke Gabriel V Falmouth Town 24th Jan 2015

[Dave]

Southwest Peninsula League Premier Division

Stoke Gabriel V Falmouth Town

Saturday 24th January 2015 Kick-Off 2.15pm

Venue Churchward Memorial ground Broadley Lane Stoke Gabriel

Referee Sam Littlefair Assistants Adrian Bond (Exminster) & Iain McGuffogg (Exmouth)

Final Score Stoke Gabriel 1 Falmouth Town 2

This was a match Stoke should have played a few weeks ago, but due to the weather it did not take place. The fixture was rearranged for much later in the season, but as both clubs were free today, the game was moved forward. I bet Stoke wished it had been played when it should have been; they were enjoying a good run of results at the time and would surely have won the match.

Before today’s kick-off, Stoke had lost their last two games, firstly away to St Blazey by a single goal and they were well beaten at home last Saturday by a very good Plymouth Parkway side. Today they faced a team below them in the league, but had to do so with seven first team players absent. Nathan Murry, Jake White, Mark Ashworh, Steve Bowker, Tom Kelly, Scott Beattie and Frazer Clark were all simply not available for one reason or another.

Stoke made a great start to the game and it only took them three minutes to take the lead. A good passing move saw the ball get laid back the edge of the Falmouth box where Ben Brown had made a good run too. He hit a powerful low shot that flew into the back of the net. A quality finish and even this early in the game, I was expecting Stoke to add further goals during the game.

Falmouth looked a very poor side that was there for the taking; they could not find any good passes to play in their forward players and did not look to have any goals in them. But they worked hard and very slowly started to get back into the match, but never really created a good goal scoring opportunity.

Stoke came so close to getting a second first half goal, a great shot from the edge of the box had the Falmouth keeper Jason Peters well beaten, but sadly for Stoke the ball struck the crossbar but did come back into play. Dave Worthington had his back to goal as the ball came off the crossbar and dropped into the box, he tried a good over head scissors kick that went just wide of the right hand post.

Falmouth’s best chance of the first half came near the end of it, Mike Vanes had been played into the Stoke box with just the Stoke keeper Scott Bellamy to beat, but he put his shot wide of the left hand post.

That was it for the first half, not the most exciting half of football I have ever watched, but Stoke were one up and looked in no real danger of losing the match. What ever Wayne Hughes the Falmouth manager said to his players during the break, most certainly worked.

Falmouth came out for the second half all guns blazing and started to look very dangerous going forward. Their number nine Kayne Trevaskis lead the attack for his side so well and was big and strong on the ball and he caused the Stoke defence so many problems.

Stokes Ryan Beattie soon found his name in the referees book and had to be spoken to by the referee again shortly afterwards. The booking was fair enough but it would have been an injustice if he had been sent off.

The Stoke defence were often to far up the pitch for my liking and always looked in danger of having a good through ball put in behind them. This happened and it was the Falmouth danger man Kayne Trevaskis who raced past the static defence and he made no mistake slotting the ball into the back of the Stoke net. Just after this Kayne Trevaskis nearly got another goal for his side.

Stoke were on the rack and they have their defender Dejan Maric to thank for keeping them in the game at this stage of it. He made a great tackle in the box on Kayne Trevaskis and them a second one straight afterwards on Falmouth’s Glen Squires, had he not made those two tackles, Falmouth would have taken the lead.

Stoke were just about still in the game and had the ball in the Falmouth box a number of times during the half, but never really looked like scoring. Then another defence spitting pass was played to the Falmouth substitute Dan Evans who ran into the Stoke box and fired his side into the lead.

Right at the death Stoke should have been back on level terms, a great ball was played from the left hand side into the Falmouth box. Stokes number seven Daniel Kingscote looked certain to score, but he missed from close in and that summed up Stokes afternoon.

A very disappointing result for Stoke, you do need to beat the teams below you and even more so when you have home advantage. But maybe it was always going to be a big ask, with so may first team players missing from the starting eleven.

EDIT.....Falmouth's second goal scorer was Sam Bromley and not Dan Evans, the mix up came about as both players were wearing the wrong shirts.

[Dave]

What The Stoke Manager Had To Say About The Defeat


PENINSULA LEAGUE: 'Home truths' for Stoke Gabriel after defeat against Falmouth Town
By HESport | Posted: January 28, 2015

By Richard Hughes


MANAGER Tim Porter and coach Matt Zadel said they shared some ‘home truths’ with their Peninsula Premier Division players after the 2-1 defeat at home to Falmouth Town on Saturday.

It was the team’s fourth successive loss after they went out of the Devon Challenge Cup at the semi-finals stage on Tuesday – they were beaten 5-0 by Southern League Premier Division side Bideford in North Devon – and there was an impromptu bout of ‘honesty’ in the changing rooms after the final whistle.

Ben Brown scored an early opener for Stoke but Falmouth’s Kayne Trevaskis equalised eight minutes into the second half and Dan Evans made it 2-1 with 15 minutes to go.

Stoke were certainly short of a few players – especially striker Steven Bowker, who was injured in the previous week’s 5-1 defeat against Plymouth Parkway – but it was the way the team almost ‘gave in’ once the Cornish visitors’ stepped up a gear that disappointed the duo more than anything else.

Porter said: “We started pretty brightly and with a good tempo and we looked like we were going to dominate – but all of a sudden Falmouth kicked into gear and we went a little bit flat.

“We lacked characters out there today – from the start of the game to the very end. It was disappointing because we know we have got a good squad of players.

“We know we had people missing but that can’t be an excuse for not looking like they really desperately wanted to win that game.

“We have had a good chat in the changing room and there were some home truths that came our way as well as went their way – and this has got to be a watershed moment.

“We cannot progress forward if we don’t believe we can beat teams – with all due respect to Falmouth – like Falmouth.”

Porter and Zadel were thrown into the deep end at the start of the season when the manager who had won promotion from Division One East with the club, Gary Fisher, walked away just days before the big kick-off.

It was never going to be an easy task to lift the players that remained at the club and turn them into a team capable of making a smooth progression into Step 6.

“Up until today we thought we were doing OK, I think,” said Porter – and Zadel added: “Make no bones about it, it was hard with what happened at the start of the season.

“But we managed to bring in a lot of good players and that is one of the disappointing things about today because I think we have got all the right players.

“We know it is a big league and unfortunately with the few we are missing it didn’t happen for us today.

“But we will stick together and we have got a good bunch of lads – we will move forward and we will do all right.

“It’s a difficult league this, it is much different to the one we have just left. There is an absolutely massive difference.

“When we sat down at the start of the season our aim was to get 11 players out – I guess really we were always looking to consolidate and it was hard after Gary left, but I think Tim and myself have managed to bring in the right players.

Porter continued: “Some of the lads who are playing for us at the moment – and some of the lads who have moved on from us – were star players in that league last year. And with all due respect to our lads, they have struggled this time. Some of them have actually had a rude awakening.

“You play against some big powerful teams in this league and I imagine some of these teams put a lot of commitment to putting in two good days of training a week – and sometimes we struggle to get enough players together for one.

“Our aim was to keep a good level of progression going and when we had that run before Christmas, we had turned a bit of a corner and we were pretty buoyant, but we have had some tough games and some injury and fitness problems and that has just knocked us a little bit.

“But as some of the lads said to us, maybe we are just as responsible as the lads out on the pitch.

“I think that might be a fair reflection but it certainly hasn’t been through a want of trying. We are putting as much time and effort and thought into it as we can but it is a learning curve for all of us.

“It wasn’t feisty – but it was honest – and it’s good that they can be honest with us if we are honest with them.”

And it doesn’t get any easier for Stoke – on Saturday they head into Cornwall for a game against third-placed St Austell.

St Austell are the form team of the Premier Division having beaten the leaders Ivybridge Town and other top dogs Bodmin Town and Plymouth Parkway in the last couple of months.



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