West Midlands Premier Division: Stone Old Alleynians 0-1 Bromyard Town
Things didn’t go to plan for the Old Boys in their Premier Division curtain raiser last Saturday, as the home side slipped to a frustrating defeat to fellow promotion winners Bromyard Town. Despite dominating possession throughout, the Alleynians failed to convert a number of chances and paid the price when the visitors nicked a second-half winner against the run of play.
“To have the majority of the game as we did and come away with nothing is very disappointing,” said Old Boys manager Matt Smith. “There was no question that we were the better side, but we allowed them an opportunity with a sluggish start to the second half and they grabbed it. On another day we would have won comfortably, but the performance was positive and we will take that into our next fixture.”
Things started brightly for the Smith’s men when Matt Thomas fired an early effort wide of the post, before Nathan Sutton wasted a glorious opportunity to lob the advancing Bromyard ‘keeper, seeing his effort drop over the crossbar.
A string of mistakes as the second half got underway then allowed Bromyard their first real opportunity of the game, as the ball landed at the feet of an attacker in the inside left position. The forward made no mistake and lofted an effort over Lewis Ratcliffe in the Alleynians goal to put the visitors in front.
The Old Boys pushed hard for an equaliser, Nathan Sutton heading over from close range before substitute Alex Kay went close on two occasions. Defender Josh Brown then had a late header cleared off the line as Bromyard hung on to take all three points.
[box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” ]SOA: Ratcliffe, Brown, Askey (c), Davies, Bigham, Taylor, WIlson, D Heard (Bradbury), Tomkinson, Sutton (Kay), Thomas (Dibden)[/box]
