This was Paul Birch’s reserves fourth game of season and a win was expected by manger Pete Sparrow who believed that we should have got something out of our two previous games.

Today’s opponents Starks Park are not technically great, but make up for this by being organised and hardworking. 

The game started off scrappy and was not helped by the poor state of the pitch, which was very small. This meant that both teams had hardly anytime on the ball and passes were going astray. 

It was proving to be a very uneventful first half where either goalkeeper was rarely troubled until the very last minute. The ball reached Terry Paine starting for his first game this season on the left of the pitch and he managed to hold off two challenges before scuffing his shot from the edge of the box past the despairing goalkeeper into the net. This was Terry’s first goal in 11 a-side football for about a year after being out injured and this hopefully is going to be the first of many for the talented winger/striker.

From being a boring and poor game in the first half the second could surely only get better.

Half time 0-1

And so it was to be proved. Starks Park came out with more conviction and looked to use the advantage of kicking downhill. They were wining every single ball over the pitch and it looked only a matter of time when they would score to draw level.

A ball was played to their right midfielder who managed to get to the byline and put a dangerous low ball into their box. This was misjudged by Acos and then Willmott in goal who came running out and collided into his defender leaving both on the floor and an easy tap in for the Starks park striker.

Starks Park then took the lead for 2-1 after a cross into the box was misjudged by Chris in goal and dropped at the midfielder’s feet to calmly slot home into the unguarded net.

From being 1-0 at half-time we were now 2-1 down with only 15 minutes of the second half gone and with captain John Rees departing things didn’t look good.

However we seem to be at our best when our backs are against the wall and Paul Partridge was once again in the right position to score his second goal of the season. The ball somehow reached him at the far post after a poor clearance and he managed to lob the onrushing keeper for the ball to drop just inside the post.

Game on again and now Paul Birch looked like they were going to be the winners of this entertaining second half. That was until a long ball by the Starks Park goalkeeper was misjudged by the Paul Birch centre backs and the Starks Park Midfielder had gambled on this to finish comfortably.

Paul Birch now had 15 minutes to get back into the game and the players were pushing hard for an equalizer. Paul had a good goal wrongly ruled out for offside and then couldn’t connect properly with a diagonal ball played across. The goal was to finally come though when Stu carried the ball out of defence and played a superb reverse ball over to Lee on the left and he took one touch before firing hard and low into the net.

We could have a penalty at the end when the big centre back flattened substitute Dan Li in the area but the referee who had a poor game backed out of the decision.

So an interesting second half but not the result Paul Birch wanted.

Full time 3-3

Man of the Match

Terry Paine -  An impressive game for the PBFC veteran in his first start for over a year since his knee injury