Exciting away game of two halves

The 4s headed to Chard, wanting to improve on the result in the home fixture.

Bridgwater were slow out of the blocks, despite plenty of warm up time. Chard’s attack was a blend of youth and experience and they attacked with pace, and outnumbered the Bridgwater defence in the early exchanges, and opened the scoring. The second goal was a soft one, and Bridgwater were three goals down after only 15 minutes. This slow start has been typical this season, and the 4s picked themselves up. The defensive line of James Kettlewell, Alan Baldwin, Ian Stradling, with the excellent Luke Otley on the left started to boss the Chard attackers, ably supported by Christian Durkin in goal. Bridgwater stopped the rot, with Alex McNeil, Oscar West, Toby Knight, Steve Miller and Sam Thomas starting to get control back in the midfield, with the Barrow boys (Kieran and Liam) starting to apply some pressure up front. No more goals before half time though, and Bridgwater were pleased to have stopped the rot.

The second half started differently from the off, with Bridgwater starting to apply pressure to Chard, with the bridgwater defence starting to get some control, and put in some crunching challenges to show Chard they meant business. It was Bridgewater who scored next, with Oscar West getting on the end of a Bridgwater move started by a defence splitting dribble by Steve Miller. Pressure continued as Bridgwater started to win some short corner - Sam Thomas on the end of an excellent short corner routine, to pull back another goal. The best was yet to come, with another short corner routine which ended with a reverse second strike from James Kettlewell cannoning off a defender and the bar to level the scores.

Chard looked rattled and brought back some senior players as the game moved end to end. Bridgwater decided press forward to try and secure all three points. This left them exposed and Chard punished them with two goals in the last 10 minutes to take the win. A heck of a game, which bodes well for the remaining two matches this season, and a better time on 2020/21.

Man of the match was wide open with so many gutsy performances on the Bridgwater team. Ultimately shared between Oscar West, Steve Miller, Sam Thomas and Alan Baldwin (playing his first full game for four seasons)