Under 12's. Home v Ashton United

  Result - Reddish North End 6 Ashton United 0

We should have had "The Green, Green Grass of Home" playing on our tannoy system (if we had one) to mark our first home match in three months on Saturday. I'm sure the chairman has the Val Doonican LP with him singing this one. But it was good to be back after such a long break.
Certainly it felt unusual having to load the car up with all the gear after so long, and when I got the nets out of their bag after their long hibernation I discovered to my horror they were full of holes....(think about it).

But the boys were excellent today and embellished our return with their biggest win of the season. Three goals in each half was the very least they deserved for an utterly dominant performance when they spent a good 80% of the match in Ashton territory, and had it not been for a thoroughly unsatisfactory performance from the appointed ref we would have been into double figures without any doubt. I counted 21 offside decisions against us! Now, a couple were obvious, others were fair enough, but as you can perhaps guess there were a number of clangers, the worst of which deprived us of another goal when Jamie, having latched onto a slack backpass and rounded the keeper, passed the ball backwards to Sam for a tap in. When Sam was given offside the howls of derision from all the Reddish parents were deafening, and I'm sure the ref must have realised his mistake.

But credit to our parents as there was no audible swearing or abuse directed at the official. Several told him what they thought but in acceptable terms, certainly not in the base Anglo-Saxon some of the Ashton parents used on the rare occasions the ref awarded us something.

In circumstances like these it is easy for teams to become frustrated but I was delighted with the boys that they kept their cool and came off the pitch with such a resounding win. After an over-eager start, Callum slotted in the first before Michael set Jamie up for a sharp finish and number 2. Good work from Chris, Daniel and Callum then saw the ball break to Michael who pounced for 3-0 and at half time it was all smiles.

As we munched our Freddos we talked about keeping the pressure on, and it was good to see us re-start at the same high tempo. Although Sam had been off-key before he took a spell as sub, he was back to his best and grabbed a second consecutive hat-trick with three excellent finishes. I managed to capture the sixth goal on film and it's on my facebook site, it was a great move after a typical lung-bursting run from Callum who laid in Jamie. Equally typically alert, Jamie passed to Sam who shimmied before firing home high past the stranded goalie.

Callum W in the goals and Josh, Jake and Felix were all very proud of their clean sheet and rightly so, although they didn't have much to do - Ashton managed a solitary shot which dribbled about twelve yards wide and a couple of corners. However, not conceding was a great effort and they deserve as much credit as the rest of the side.

All in all a very pleasing morning despite our frustrations with the official. Daniel and Mark had superb matches and bossed the midfield, Reece and Chris got stuck in and played their part, but in the end Callum B took the man-of-the-match award for a tireless performance. He was all over the pitch, he always wanted the ball and he was the first one to congratulate all the other goal scorers. In this kind of form he puts the final touches to a team that is becoming difficult to play against. That's four straight wins now, and five in six in 2009, with 25 goals scored and only 7 conceded (4 of those in one match vs Clayton). In all competitions we've scored 73 times, and with the 30 we netted in pre-season it has been a marvellous effort. Let's keep it going!

It'll be two weeks before we see if we can, though, as we've no game this weekend (possibly a friendly) before Oldham visit us twice in two weeks, first for a league game, then round 2 of the Challenge Cup.

Scorers : Sam (3) Callum B (1) Jamie (1) Michael (1)

Man of the match : Callum B