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Photos: Tom Wooldridge
After a quite frankly shocking first half of football, Alcuin managed to overcome Langwith 3-1 courtesy of strikes from Danny Matthews, Luca Nazzicone and Josh Allen in addition to a rather dubious refereeing decision.
It was against the run of play that Langwith made it 1-0. Tom Rudden’s cross from the left wing was placed into the net at the far post by Andy Hutt. At half-time Langwith Captain Matt Jones confessed, in a brutally honest manner, “that was one of the worst halves of football I’ve ever seen.” At the start of the second period, Alcuin Captain Chris Boyd sent centre back Harry Billimore to the vanguard of his force. This proved to be an effective decision as Alcuin proceeded to pepper the Langwith goal.
After this, probably one of worst refereeing decisions in the several decades of college football history took place. Billimore took out Kris Cheshire after the latter had beaten him to the ball on the edge of the area only for the referee to wave play on, permitting Matthews to pass the ball into an empty net, much to the indignation of the Langwith players.
Langwith had a chance to re-establish the advantage, as Rudden ran on to a ball over the top, but his dinked shot flew just over the crossbar. Soon afterwards, Alcuin took the lead. A Greg Fearn free-kick fell to Luca Nazzicone who, after hitting the upright, managed to convert the opportunity at the second attempt.
Alcuin then went on to extend their advantage a few minutes later, a Billimore through ball finding Josh Allen who coolly slotted the ball into the bottom right corner. Soon after Luke Holbrook came close for Langwith before Billimore almost scored a scintillating volley at the death.
Post match, a dejected Matt Jones simply stated: “we were just turd.” Counterpart Chris Boyd commented: “we battled well all game. We gambled with another man up front in the second half and I felt that made the difference.” Of the dubious goal, he said: “I was looking at a bird in the sky.” An answer slightly more inventive than those uttered by countless premier league managers, but about as incredulous.