South Rushden Rhinos V Wellingborough Town Yellow (14/11/09)
 
 
SQUAD:
Michael Childs, Phillip Hughes, Liam Pilcher, William Turner, Scott Simms, Connor Love, Logan Fisher, Harry Stoner, Harry Richardson, Lewis Groves.
 
With Logan ‘The Cat’ Fisher having to withdraw from the squad due to illness, Lewis took the goalkeepers jersey for the visit of Wellingborough Town Yellow, other than that the Rhinos were at full strength and went into the match full of confidence on the back of a number of good performances over the recent weeks.
This fixture really did end up being a game of two halves, both teams were quick out of the blocks and it was apparent from early on that this was going to be a fast paced, end to end affair. With five minutes on the clock a quick counter attack resulted in Connor despatching a right footed drive into the bottom left hand corner to put the Rhinos into the driving seat. Straight from the restart Wellingborough attacked up the right and a low cross into the box was met by the oncoming attacker who hit a powerful shot towards the corner of the net that was miraculously saved by Lewis who then scrambled immediately across his goal line to somehow save the follow up. There wont be many better saves this season and the Man of The Match Award had a new home for another week.

Unfortunately Lewis had no chance with the equaliser as the Rhinos were harshly punished for a push in the box and the resulted penalty was tucked away to bring the teams level. The Rhinos responded well and were soon ahead again with Connor claiming his second of the match, unfortunately the lead was short lived and Wellingborough cancelled out the lead for the second time as the half drew to a close. With minutes of the half left the Rhinos were handed a penalty and a chance to go into half time ahead but unluckily the penalty was inches wide of the target.

The second half was a totally different affair with the Rhinos spending the remainder of the match camped in their own half with their backs to the wall. The weather played its part and Wellingborough took advantage of the strong winds in their favour and managed another three goals before the final whistle although the Rhinos matched them for most of the game. With no fixture next week the Rhinos are sure to put this defeat to the back of their minds, re-group and come back even stronger for the visit of Finedon in 2 weeks.

Thanks to Stuart Simms for the report