Highworth Town Res 4-2 Brimscombe & Thrupp dev

A game of two halves

By Chris Ayres

After two weeks without a game the Reserves returned to action with a home against Brimscombe & Thrupp. The visitors who had picked up a good point against league leaders last week, could prove to be a real test.

Highworth started brightly and created chances at will, playing some slick football it didn’t take long for them to take the lead when Cameron Lagan broke through on goal from a Billy Aldrich through ball and coolly slipped the ball past the visiting keeper.

Only five minutes later it was 2-0 when Jordan Wilkins danced past two defenders out wide before drilling the ball into the top corner from 20 yards. Barely a minute after that and the game only 19 minutes old it was 3-0 when Dan Grieve slipped Lagan in on goal again and the Worthian front-man took his chance well to increase the lead.

Highworth maintained the pressure and carried on creating chances with the Brimscombe keeper on good form and making some good saves to keep Highworth at bay. With 36 minutes gone, some one-touch football around the box between Jordan Clark and Harry Ayres led to Clark being brought down in the box for a penalty, which he duly got up and converted himself to make it 4-0.

That’s how it stayed until half time. The second half began and much to the disgust of the management team after the half time team talk, which seemingly went in one ear and out of the other as Highworth tried to overplay in their own box and the Brimscombe forward robbed Ed Evans before firing past Ed Salsbury in the Highworth goal from close range.

This inspired Brimscombe and gave them some self-belief and they soon had another goal back making the score 4-2.

Highworth finally got their act together again in the second half and although not playing anywhere like they did in the first, they comfortably saw the game out for a 4-2 win.

It was a real Jekyll and Hyde performance, where if we play like we did first half, we'll give anyone a game, but if we play like we did in the second we’d have some long afternoons.