○Clanfield9–2Andover Town

Andover Town travelled down the M27 to meet league newcomers Clanfield hoping to avenge their 5-0 thrashing at home in November. Clanfield play their home matches on a 3G pitch at Southern League Havant & Waterlooville. A chill wind and bright January sunshine greeted the two teams at kick off, Andover playing in their all red away strip.

Hoping to avoid their dismal record of conceding early goals Andover started brightly enough but an all familiar start to this season ensued when again an all too familiar defensive lapse led to Clanfield opening the scoring in the 10th minute when number 9 Fred Penfold in acres of space slid the ball home from short range. As the half progressed Town were not doing too badly but their efforts were undone in the 20th minute when again awful defending with zero marking presented Clanfield’s Stewart Towse with a very easy goal making the score 2-0 to the home side. There then followed an embarrassingly easy passage of play again with atrocious defending by Andover which led to Clanfield adding 3 more goals in quick succession by Reeves, Penfold again and Wingfield. In a faintly bizarre end to the half Jamile Goodman lobbed the home keeper in the 45th minute to make the half time score 5-1 to the hosts, when Andover scored all the players and the away supporters seemed genuinely shocked that they had done so.

What would normally happen at half time with this scoreline would be a blistering tirade from the manager about Town’s woeful first half defending. Whether this would have any effect in the second half remained to be seen.

The second half continued much as the first half had ended with Clanfield scything through the Andover defence at will, not helped by Andover going a man down on the 51st minute when Chris Kapend was red carded. Clanfield added 4 more goas with 15 minutes to go to make the score 9-1 at that stage. The goals came from Knight in the 60th minute, Penfold in the 70th minute to get his hattrick, Bartlett in the 75th minute and Knight in the 77th. Town got a consolation goal in the 83rd minute from substitute Matthew Devereux to make the final score 9-2 to the hosts.

Summing up this performance is not difficult. Andover were truly awful and relegation now seems almost a nailed on certainty. One is left with the view that the present squad simply lacks the ability to match any of the teams in this division. The prospects for the remaining 19 matches are indeed bleak. The next match is on Tuesday next January 30th at home to Fleetlands, kick off 7.45pm.

p.s. One note of interest at the match - Captain Owen Trapnell equalled the number of appearances held by former Captain Brendan Holmes of 200 !!