by Peter Scherer
Following their victory over Mickleover Athletic last Friday, Mickleover Reserves were brought down to earth with a bang last night, losing 1-5 at Linby Colliery Welfare.
Starting line-up: 1-Josh Bull 2-Kacper Krawczyk 3-Connor Bland 4-Finlay Riggott 5-Dylan Buckley-Moore 6-Joe Moore 7-Shujah Ali 8-Luis Mas-Hall 9-Mason Chadwick 10-Thomas Swift 11-Mikey Mandimutsira. Subs: Marts Sudavs, Mateusz Krawczyk, Michel Laskiewicz, Efren Rolleston, Cohen Fearn.
It was a fairly lively start on a breezy but sunny evening, with Bull forced into the first save after five minutes, after some end to end exchanges.
Three minutes later our hosts headed just wide after a corner, as they began to settle and the Mickleover defence started to come under more and more pressure.
12 minutes in and Bull had to make another good save after a strong attack had outpaced Sports defence down the left, and he was in action again just two minutes later, picking out a dangerous cross from the right.
Mickleover had a half chance in the 16th minute when some good work from Swift found Chadwick in the box, but he was unable to get a final shot in.
Buckley-Moore headed over from a corner a few minutes later, soon followed by a speculative shot over the bar from Mandimutsira.
Swift and Ali were showing glimpses of promise, backed up by the hard working Mandimutsira and target man Chadwick.
But Linby were soon back on top, just missing out in a goal mouth scramble after 21 minutes. Only three minutes later they made their pressure count, when a cross from the left was headed home, the striker seemingly unmarked as the defence froze, 0-1.
Six minutes later another scramble in the box was cleared after Linby had scythed through the defence again, but they made it 0-2 after 32 minutes when the defence failed to clear a cross from the right. Bull saved the initial effort, but couldn’t stop the rebound.
Sudavs came on for Mandimutsira just after the half hour, after he took a knock. But it was Bull in action again, saving from another shot on the right with the half time whistle following.
Although Mickleover’s midfield had managed to make progress in the first half, the defence were outplayed in all departments, with keeper Bull the busiest player on the field.
The second half had barely kicked off when a Linby striker spotted Bull off his line. He tried a speculative lob but the keeper had it covered, but a minute later a fairly weak shot came in from the right, Bull left the ball expecting it to go wide, but after a bobble on the pitch it found the bottom left corner, 0-3.
Swift had another shot after 52 minutes, giving the home keeper a rare save to make and five minutes later Chadwick had a shot blocked.
But another goal soon followed for our hosts when the defence fell apart, before another fairly weak shot slipped through Bull’s hands and it was 0-4 with 63 minutes gone.
Bull punched away another shot two minutes later, soon followed by a header just over the bar as virtually all of the play was in the Mickleover half.
Mas-Hall had a shot saved by the home keeper’s feet, before Bull pulled off another good double save, the first from a shot well outside the box and the second with his feet too.
But with eight minutes left Sports finally got on the scoresheet when Moore got on the end of another goal mouth scramble.
It still wasn’t over though as some shambolic defending left Linby to score number five, with Bull again saving initially, but with no defender reacting to his save, the rebound was in and it ended 1-5.
