No Christmas Cheer As Concord Soar To Victory.
The Skrill South.
Boreham Wood 0 Concord Rangers 2,
by John Mead.
A poor Boxing Day showing in which Wood failed to muster a single shot on target leaves the side with just one League win in ten attempts at Meadow Park.
A decent opening five minutes saw Austin Lipman strike the crossbar for the third time since arriving on loan from Arsenal from a free kick. That was as close as Wood came to a goal in this early kick off that just got worse for Ian Allinson’s side as the game wore on.
Rangers won a penalty after just eight minutes. With the whole Wood defence running away from goal for what they were convinced was a clear offside, was not ratified by the assistant linesman allowing Sam Collins a clear run at goal. James Russell could only clip the legs of the forward, his punishment a yellow card, which could easily have been red.
Leading scorer Sam Higgins made no mistake from the spot, then just a minute later a poor header from Charlie O’Loughlin almost gifted the visitors a second. On this occasion Reece Harris blasted his effort wide of the post.
The visitors were sharper and hungrier to the ball, their forwards sensing the lack of cohesion in the Wood defence harrying and pressing, whilst the midfield won every loose ball and closed down a lost looking Wood side at every opportunity.
Wood won a succession of free kicks and the odd corner that amounted to nothing with Graeme Montgomery doing just enough at the near post to put off Steve Cawley in another shaky moment for the normally resolute Wood defence.
Lipman and Matthew Ball combined well for Wood, only for Billy Lobjoit to send his cross out of the ground. Montgomery released Lipman who was tripped by Steve King with the resultant free kick driven poorly into the wall.
Lobjoit did extremely well in getting away from two defenders finding Montgomery whose first time ball sent Jeffrey through on goal, only for the Arsenal youngster to shoot just wide across goal, Wood’s best move of the game.
After the interval Wood failed to raise their game and had to wait almost twenty minutes for their first shot at goal, which came from Jeffrey and went well over the crossbar. The Beach Boys went from strength to strength and slowly started going up through the gears after defending their lead superbly.
Any slight hope that Wood had of turning around a miserable performance was gone after 86 minutes. Collins run took him beyond O’Loughlin leaving him the simple task of slotting home beyond Russell.
It was a well deserved victory for the visitors in response to what was a very disjointed performance from Wood.
Speaking after the game Ian Allinson expressed his , “ Extreme disappointment. I did not expect that today after performing so well last Saturday. In Anthony Jeffrey we have the best player on the park, yet why we did not get the ball to him more often bemused me. We tried to put more players on the front foot today to go in search of goals and it backfired. I thought we competed well first half, save giving away a penalty which was down to the poor defending before hand. In the second half we took too long to move the ball, tried playing football in the wrong areas and totally ran out of ideas. In my mind five or six did not turn up today and let us hope the Christmas break did not play a part. Concord Rangers worked exceptionally hard for each other as a team and we were simply not good enough.”
Team: Russell, Nunn, Morgan, Cox, O’Loughlin, Reynolds, Lipman (Garrard 82), Ball, Lobjoit ( Moli 52), Jeffrey, Montgomery ( Sterling-Parker 82).
Subs not used: Noto, Jones.
Bookings: Russell, Reynolds.
Goals: Concord Rangers: Higgins 8 pen, Collins 86.
