Saturday 15th August 2020
Pre-Season Friendly
at Ascot Avenue, Cantley Park
Bessacarr FC (0) 0
Denaby Main (1) 2
Christian Baxby 14, Jordan Cooper 67 pen
Point & hope pictures gallery link: Click HERE
Denaby Main have made a flying start to their pre-season campaign, with back to back wins against Phoenix FC 2-0 and Houghton Main 4-0. I joked with one of the Denaby players in the week leading up to this afternoon's game at Cantley Park, that their winning sequence would probably end today, because I'd jinx it when I turned up to watch them play. But even my Jonah like presence couldn't knock Main's winning run off course and they kept a third clean in a row too. Although that wasn't for a lack of trying on Bessacarr's part, who had been a width of the woodwork and the rub of the green regarding the referee's sight-lines in relation to a couple of penalty incidents away from possibly getting something out of this game, in which both teams didn't only have to battle to overcome each other, but had a 'difficult' surface to deal with too.
This wasn't the hosts usual pitch, but one further along Ascot Avenue towards Doncaster Rovers training ground... in fact, when I arrived and discovered the Cantley Pavilion locked up and a juniors training camp taking place where I was expecting to find these two teams warming up, I did wonder if I'd made a wasted trip for a postponed game... but as I edged out of the car-park and looked to my left, through the trees and in the distance, I spotted the brightly coloured yellow shirts of Bessacarr and the resplendent reds of Denaby Main going through their paces.
The match referee arrived (on foot) and without any delay we were good to go.
During the opening exchanges goal-scoring opportunities were few and far between as both teams sized each other up. In fact one of my socially-distanced 'bubble' for the afternoon... a 'mob' of three of us, all stood a good old imperial 6.56 feet apart, well back from the touchline... suggested that it hadn't so much been of a case of there not having been any chances created as of yet, as much as some of the attempts at playing the ball forward not even arriving in the same postcode as their intended destination... a tad harsh methinks, but a good one-liner for comedy value nevertheless.
But when the deadlock was broken in the fourteenth minute, the strike that separated the sides was a bit special.
Christian Baxby stood over the ball some twenty five yards (perhaps even more) from the Bessacarr goal and curled a peach of free-kick over the home side's wall to bulge the net.
Sadly I had put my camera down a few minutes before, but managed to capture the blurred approximation of the moment reproduced above on my phone. Maybe the hosts had been caught out because they were distracted by and too busy worrying about the omnipresent danger of the highly-rated Steve Nettleship lurking dangerously just out of shot. But either way, it was a quality hit by Denaby's number 4, deserving of a bigger stage than a parks pitch on the outer reaches of 'Donny'.
And it certainly made up for some of the disappointment the visitors would've felt for having two goals chalked off for 'borderline' offside calls today.
But Bessacarr had their own 'lethal weapon' in the shape of their experienced striker Lee Holmes. Formerly the scourge of many a NCEL defender when he turned out in the royal blue of nearby Rossington Main. 'Holmesy' still knows all the right runs to make, best positions to get into, exactly where his teammates are when he's flicking the ball on, when to bust a gut and when to conserve his energy by not chasing after lost causes... playing against an individual of his stature must be something of a steep learning curve for centre-halves in the CMFL.
It was Holmes who almost put the home side on level terms, but his towering downward header was blocked on the line, to appeals of "Handball!" from his vexed sidekicks. But Denaby rode their luck, played to the whistle and would've been relieved to have been given the chance to clear their lines.
Bessacarr also crashed an effort against the left-hand upright shortly before half-time and were obviously well up for making a game of it.
HT: 0-1
Holmes tested the replacement keeper from the almost exact same range as Baxby had scored from but his effort was well saved.
In the sixty-seventh minute the visitors were awarded a penalty for an apparent trip... to be fair to the referee he can only go on what he sees from his angle and he did consult the lad from Bessacarr who was running the line before making his own decision.
The judges from the local swimming club, who just happened to be passing the game along the adjacent tree lined avenue, were suitably impressed by the forward twist, triple-pike and reverse-flip that Lee Anthony achieved without even belly-flopping and marked him accordingly... and when he got back to his feet he jokingly took a bow with a grin on his face.
But regardless of the politics of the 'was it wasn't it?' conundrum the incident posed, where several people connected to Denaby even said that it was dubious claim, at best... Bessacarr accepted the decision with good grace and Jordan Cooper drilled the spot-kick into the bottom left hand corner of the net with aplomb.
Although the home side had taken the decision on the chin and could even see the funny side of the situation, I assumed that the referee would now be walking home too... because I can't imagine any of the local lads would've offered him a lift. But credit where it's due, the guy had kept the game flowing for the majority of the afternoon and had probably made less mistakes over the course of the ninety minutes than anyone else present.
FT: Bessacarr 0 v Denaby Main 2
For the record, because I know that there are a lot of pedantic and overly-scrupulous sad cases monitoring all non-league and grassroots bases on t'internet (hands-up, I know that I'm one too from time to time), the swimming club judges weren't really present... sometimes I make this blog up as I go along to boost my circulation ratings with a few crap jokes.
