Match Report
Banstead Athletic 6 v 4 Cobham, League, February 2nd 2008
Report by Nigel Rousell.
Saturday's away game at Banstead Athletic, to the neutral watching what a game, a score line more associated with Kevin Keegan than the Combined Counties saw Banstead finally overcome Cobham in a 10 goal thriller.
It was Banstead that started the brightest and after 20 minutes went one up after a ball spilled by Nick McGregor resulted in a goal. Within four minutes Cobham were level when Mark Remnant won a header and flicked it on to Shaun Powell who used his strength to turn his marker and from the edge of the box lobbed the Banstead goalie. Then the turning point of the first half, from the restart McGregor was forced into making a save low down to his right and in the resulting scramble Cobham's Captain Martin Dynan is injured and left the pitch with, at the time, a suspected broken ankle. Cobham never really reorganised themselves and Banstead took a 3-1 lead into the break.
The away dressing room was not going to be a place for the faint hearted but whatever was said did the job and it was a fired up Cobham that emerged for the second half and within 14 minutes they were level through two goals from Powell to complete his hatrick on his first start. Banstead were not going to lay down and came straight back at Cobham, Andrew Charles slipping on the heavy surface which put him under pressure and resulted in him conceding a penalty. McGregor saved well to his right and this further inspired Cobham who won a free kick 30 yards out from the home goal - Charles made amends for his earlier slip and whipped it in at the keeper who was unable to prevent it from going in to make the score 3-4 with 64 minutes gone. Then the turning point of the second half - 83 minutes on the clock and Powell outpaced the last defender and when everybody in the ground was expecting him to go on and put the game beyond Banstead he squared the ball towards his strike partner who was flagged offside. The keeper then cleared the ball, with the referee waving play on and with the Cobham team naively pushing up in support and stopping for the offside, the clearance landed deep in their half which allowed Banstead to equalise. This then gave the momentum to the home side that by now had pushed onto to 4-3-3 formation; Cobham heads dropped and disappointingly conceded two more goals in the 86 and 88th minute to leave the result 6-4 in a breath taking game for the neutral.
