Bourne Deeping Mens 1’s v Sudbury 1‘s

Bourne Deeping secured successive wins for only the second time this season with a hard-fought, slightly fortuitous but well deserved victory over mid-table Sudbury on Saturday.

Travelling a long distance with a bare eleven, this looked like a tough away fixture for the Dragons but they showed from the start that they intended to take the game to Sudbury. James Sharpe was influential in the middle of the pitch as the away team cut through the home press at will in the first half. The first short corner won from this early pressure was narrowly put wide of the left post but the warning signs were there for Sudbury.

The pressure told when, with their second short corner, the Dragons broke through. Richard Collins drag-flicked from the top of the D and the Ball was deflected past his own keeper by a hapless Sudbury defender.
Half-time came and went and then Bourne Deeping threatened briefly to self-destruct when they conceded three goals in quick succession thanks to three lapses in concentration.

The Dragons of October 2019 would have crumbled; not so the eleven who travelled on Saturday. With less than fifteen minutes to play, James Sharpe pulled the first goal back with a looping lob over a stranded keeper from close range before surging through the middle just two minutes later to provide a pass to Iain Robb, who calmly deflected the ball past an onrushing keeper.

So, the scores level and the tensions rising, Bourne Deeping sensed an opportunity and continued to push forward. With just two minutes of the match left, Joe Youngs latched onto a pass from Scott Downie just inside the Sudbury half and took on the home team’s tiring left-back, whose covering teammate eventually tripped Youngs as he entered the D - short corner to the away side. A scrappy routine brought joy - captain Phil Arnold eventually stabbed the Ball into the goal to take his team 4-3 up with just sixty seconds to play.

The drama didn’t end there - Sudbury surged up the other end from the pushback and won a short corner of their own. The final whistle blew, so Bourne just had to clear their lines and victory would be theirs. Sudbury’s captain lashed the ball past Luke Barkworth - surely it was the first strike from the corner and had hit the net rather than the backboard? The umpires conferred, ruled ‘no goal’. Sudbury complained, Bourne Deeping celebrated.