A wasteful Langwith side were left to rue their profligacy in front of goal after they gave away a 1-0 lead in a tightly contested match with James College.
After starting positively, Langwith quickly ran out of ideas and spent a lot of the first half playing balls over the top, attempting to utilise Bruce Starkey’s pace. Nick St. George and Matt Bainbridge were organised and made sure there was little room for him to roam between them and their goalkeeper however.
The most controversial moment of the match came in the first half: James Offord took the ball past Liam Condron on the edge of the Langwith penalty box and was readying himself to shoot when Condron pulled him back by the shirt. Nothing came from the resulting free-kick and James College may well feel hard done by; there was a greater chance of scoring from the open play situation than the free-kick, and Condron went unpunished.
The half-time score was 0-0 and little changed with the onset of the second half. James pushed forward as a unit but lacked incision, and Langwith’s attacking performance was rapidly becoming the Bruce Starkey show: the centre-forward was chasing the ball in midfield, taking throw-ins and free-kicks and running at defenders left, right and centre. At one point it seemed conceivable that he might get on the end of one of his own crosses.
However, when Langwith did open the scoring, the goal came from their left-winger Danny Mullen, and it was a screamer. Having seen many through balls comfortably gathered by Toby Owen, Mullen tried a change of tack and cut inside to let rip from 25 yards into the top-right corner of the net. The match subsequently opened up, and James equalised within minutes. James Offord broke into the box and got a shot away; Michael Palmer was equal to the first effort but the ball fell back to Offord, who made no mistake in slipping the ball into the goal.
Langwith began to look shaky and James’ second goal was a gift. Danny Mullen did his best to get his head to the ball from Michael Palmer’s goal-kick, but landed it just outside Langwith’s penalty area. James Offord scrambled the ball to the feet of Josh Brownlow who shot first time. Palmer got a hand to it, but couldn’t prevent the goal. Starkey had a one-on-one chance to level the score with only a few minutes left to play. He raced on to the through ball he’d been waiting for from the start of the match and lofted his shot over Toby Owen, but also over the goal. The game finished 2-1 to James College.
The James College captain, Simon Mole, praised his team for their resolve, saying: “We battled, played well in patches, and deserved the win.” Langwith’s captain, Callum Sheridan, was “disappointed to lose the lead” but remained encouraged by his team’s performance, citing the “massive improvement from last week.” He admits his team “need[s] to be more clinical”, but will now “only get better.”