South 3rds' inability to take points from our home games struck again, as Bourne Deeping became the eighth side this season to head home with the spoils. Just three more attempts left this season to change this, and our next home game is a nice easy one against unbeaten league leaders Spalding. Ho hum.

In keeping with recent performances, this was a much more competitive game than when we visited the Dragons earlier in the season. The first half was something of a midfield arm-wrestle, with few chances at either end. Which made Bourne Deeping’s efficient dispatch of a 3-on-2 opportunity midway through the opening period particularly telling. The overload was created by a clever roll of a defender and then snappily exploited by drawing the last two defenders and passing square to supporting teammates, sending the forward in one-on-one on Parky.

One-nil became two-nil from a short corner. The original effort was saved, but the looping ball fell nicely for a forward, who brought it down and passed to a teammate to thread a shot through a three inch gap left inside the near post by the defender on station, who had lost his bearings [yeah, apologies about that one].

Our best effort of the opening period came from a short late on, which was slipped right to Stu to hit; his effort was arrowing into the far corner, until the keeper stretched out a leg to deflect around the post.

We carried more of a threat in the second half, and pulled it back to two-one through the combination of Souths junior and senior. It stemmed from some neat skill by Tom out on the left touchline just inside his own half, moving the ball around to play himself through a couple of challengers, one of whom was the full-back. With the left side of the pitch open, Tom raced towards the circle, and then as he was approaching switched play to Paul on the other side of the D. Paul received (at a stretch), cut inside the covering defender and put a reverse stick sweep under the keeper and home.

As long as the gap stayed at one goal there was hope, particularly with Dave, Tom and Ali working hard in the forward zones, but with around ten minutes to play Bourne Deeping killed the game off with their second conversion of a short. Again it came from a second ball, Parky saving the original shot but seeing the rebound collected by a forward rather than a defender. He turned and got a crisp connection on the ball to beat the keeper and the two sticks down on the line.

We tried to plug away after this, and had some more promising moves which foundered on the stick of the Dragons' sweeper, as our need for goals quickly saw us heading centrally up the pitch rather too much. But we never really tested the visitors keeper again.