Bacup bowed out of the FA Vase at the first hurdle in this tight contested game against East Lancashire rivals Colne. The first real chance fell to the home side who were attacking up the slope when they struck a post capitalizing on Bacup's sloppy play. At the opposite end Bacup went close following a corner when Chris Greenwoods shot whistled inches wide of the post.
On the day Bacup’s ball retention was poor which invited its own pressure onto the Bacup defence which resulted in several corners for the home side, under pressure the Bacup keeper Paul Horridge took a nasty dead leg and for the remainder of the game was restricted. Clear cut chances for both sides were at a premium during the first forty five minutes although Bacup’s Tony Carroll did get into some excellent positions but his team mates either failed to find him or cheaply gave the ball away. In injury time of the first half Bacup’s inability to organise on the home sides corner almost led to Colne taking the lead when Bacup had left two players unmarked at the far post, luckily the danger was averted and the game was scoreless at the break.
At the start of the second half Bacup should have done better with a well worked move which resulted in Bryan Herbert going through slightly wide of goal but his inexperience in attempting to beat the Colne keeper at his near post instead of shooting across the keeper resulted in an opportunity missed and the ball striking the side netting. This opportunity proved to be costly when on fifty five minutes Colne were gifted the goal which took them through to the next round of this trophy. A long ball down the slope was comfortably in the visitors control, or that is what it should have been until defender Chris Cooper received a shout from his keeper Paul Horridge that it was his ball. Inexplicably though Horridge was slow to react and whilst defender Cooper left the ball for his keeper Colne’s Kevin Urwins nipped in tapping the ball away from the keeper and with the help of the post Colne were one up.
This obviously made it even more difficult for the visitors not only were they attacking up the slope but Colne put men behind the ball in numbers to preserve their lead. Despite that Bacup had quite a lot of possession but too many times the possession was squandered by giving the ball away. This resulted in two good opportunities for the home side both coming down Bacup’s left, the first looked like a cross but deceived Horridge and struck his far post before he could gather the ball and the second was when Nick Dowsing was slow to react to close the player down who’s shot was tipped over the bar from Horridge.
Brent Peters Managers Comments "It is never easy at Colne by nature of the pitch but it also makes life even harder when we constantly give the ball away. Once we did that Colne just knocked the ball long and squeeze putting our defence under constant pressure. When we got the ball upto the front lads either we would fail to hold the ball up and try to turn and losing the ball cheaply again inviting pressure onto our back lads with our opponents knocking long balls. In addition to this when balls are knocked high and long from our players upto our front lads instead of competing with their centre backs for the ball we would stand off giving them the luxury of a free header, something which infuriates me. This was a big game and big games needs big players in your side to be putting in big performances, on this showing our centre forward fails to compete for the ball if it is not where he wants the ball, our central midfield player constantly passed the ball to our opponents or were caught in possession, and our goalkeeper calls for the ball but slow reacting and that cost us at least a replay. Those three key positions are the spine of our team Goalkeeper, Centre Midfield, Centre Forward and are all big players and very good players but sadly when we needed them the most they under achieved. Credit to Colne and in particular the lad who scored, it was an opportunist goal and if my lads up front did show the same desire to get in on a ball the way the Colne striker did, we might, just might start scoring more goals and progress in competitions "
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