Jokers 4 – 1 Wee Bairns

Sunday 13 November, 2005, k.o. 4 p.m.

Team: Linter; Lynes, Vere, Gromb, Keen; Milner, Mandolini, Seaton-Smith, J. Perez-Tejedor; King, Wilby.

Sub: Stevens (on for King, 60).

Scorers: Wilby (2), Milner, Seaton-Smith.

With the Wee Bairns lying just a point behind the second-placed Jokers, having won three of their four league matches, a close match was in prospect. Despite the convincing nature of the scoreline, so it proved, with the Jokers having to come from behind to score a flurry of late goals in order to put some distance between themselves and their opponents in the race for automatic promotion. It was a strong Jokers line-up, with Read, Gamson and Hyde the principal absentees, allowing Mandolini to try yet another new position, this time in central midfield, where he distinguished himself.

The early exchanges were fairly even, with the Jokers missing a great chance when Milner stepped inside a defender only to blaze his right-footed shot over the bar from ten yards. In response, a bright attack down the Bairns’s left saw the resulting cross headed against Linter’s crossbar. Thereafter it was the Jokers who assumed control, dominating possession, creating chances and reducing the Bairns to sporadic attacks. A harsh decision against a Bairns defender for bundling over Perez-Tejedor (while managing to head the ball) should have been a penalty, as it took place well inside the box. Instead, the award of a free-kick on the edge of the box produced a Lynes effort that went narrowly over the bar. With the Bairns’s suspect-looking keeper always likely to offer a chance, balls were being fired across the face of goal but without a breakthrough.

Half-time saw the Jokers justifiably confident that they would emerge with a win. They had a stranglehold on midfield, with rare Bairns attacks being snuffed out by Vere and Gromb to prevent Linter being called into serious action. The second half followed that pattern of the first. The Jokers continued to enjoy the bulk of the possession. But midway through the half the game was changed by a refereeing decision. With the Bairns winning a free-kick in the Jokers’s left midfield area, the ball was swung into the box where Vere was tangling with the no. 7. As both players fell in the box, the referee adjudged Vere to be the offending player, and so for the second week running he had a penalty awarded against him. Unlike the previous match, where Linter produced a fine save, he could do nothing about the no. 14’s powerfully struck spot kick, the Bairns’s first shot on target, and so a game from which the Jokers looked likely to emerge with at least a point was suddenly turned on its head.

Credit to the team, then, for responding in the right way once again. As so often this season, it was Wilby who made the impact. Receiving the ball deep with his back to goal and two defenders for company, he managed a quick turn that shrugged off both before finding the top corner with a shot that no keeper, suspect or otherwise, would have got near. Minutes later, Seaton-Smith prodded through for Milner to beat the keeper to the ball and find the net.

By now, the quick turnaround in fortunes had left the Bairns demoralised. It was either from this restart or the next that they tried the old ‘score from the kick-off’ routine, the ball bobbling through to Linter for their second on-target effort. The third Jokers goal arrived from Lynes’s corner, headed in at the far post by Seaton-Smith for his first league goal of the season. The scoreline was given a slightly flattering look when substitute Stevens curled in a fine cross from the right which the keeper misjudged, presenting Wilby with his second goal.

A good performance then, with all departments of the team working well. The result puts Jokers on thirteen points from five games, and stretches the unbeaten league run to seven matches, extending back to last season. But a similar tough test arrives in the next two matches against early pace-setters the Elbow Room.