football rambles

 Last week, I was in Malaga for a break and on the Tuesday managed to get to a Champions League Basketball game between Unicaja Malaga and Reggiana. Going into the game, I felt like Reggiana were the favourites and they certainly burst into the lead and ended the first quarter 25 to 16 up. However, Malaga had a few tricks up their sleeve and the cross ball from the right to the left that all too often for Reggiana saw them getting 3 points helped them get back into the game and eventually start to outshoot their opponents. Amine Noua converting 5 three point scores, Matt Thomas 6 and Tyler Kalinoski 3. The player that impressed me the most though was Kendrick Perry, who seemed to be able to control the pace of the game when most needed. Anyway, I am no basketball expert, but really enjoyed the night out and would definitely go again. It's a shame that the Champions League is less easy to follow in the UK now and that the game doesn't have the popularity it does on the continent...

 Downham continued their unbeaten run in the league on Halloween with a fairly comfortable win over Walsham Le Willows.  After 11 minutes the home team took the lead after some impressive work by Toby Lawall, who slalomed through the Walsham defence to put the ball on a plate for Shaun Avis to stroke the ball home from close range.  The rest of the half ebbed and flowed but with Downham looking the most threatening, especially with Lawall on the left. Walsham came out in the second half trying to get back into the game, but that wasn't to last long with Lawal again providing some wing trickery and this time setting up Owain McQuaid who made it 2-0 from a difficult angle. Tobi Lawall was no doubt the man of the match, but at 2-0 he seemed desperate to get a goal himself and it perhaps could have been more, if he'd have passed a bit more later on. However, fair play to him he really put in a shift and was the difference in quality between the two teams.

 This was a very limp display by Norwich as they slumped to a sixth consecutive loss at home to Portsmouth on Saturday. This was a game of very few chances for either team, but it was Norwich who were chasing the match for most of the second half. The game was decided by a Marezi penalty in the 51st minute. The closest that Norwich came was when Pelle Mattson hit the post, but overall the performance wasn't good enough. 

 A 42 minute penalty from Jesse Nwabueze was the difference between these two teams at the Walks on Saturday. Buxton seemed to turn up aiming to play for a draw and didn't really have a Plan B. It wasn't a classic by any means but it gave Lynn a third win in a row and they are now up to sixth, which isn't bad given that a lot of people had them down as relegation candidates at the start of the season.

 It's a long time since I had ventured to Histon for a match, so much so they were in the National League at the time looking like they might become a league club. Now they sit near the bottom of the United Counties League Division One South. I had a bit of a pub crawl ahead of the game on Saturday not expecting a classic, especially as they were playing Daventry who have also had a poor start to the season. However, despite the game not going Histon's way, it was a good game and there were goals galore. Histon actually looked pretty good going forward and they were first on the scoreboard when Ryan Sharman headed home after just 2 minutes. This perked Histon up for a few minutes and it looked like they might score more. However, Daventry soon played themselves into a game and scored a header themselves further up the pitch when Tommy Kruck equalised after 20 minutes. Things got worse on 37 minutes when Kruck scored again to give the visitors a two goal lead at the break. Histo...

 A nice sunny day saw Downham take on early league leaders Stowmarket at the Memorial Fields. Stowmarket started the game showing why they were top of the league going into the game. Downham faced attack after attack. Fortunately, Charlie Congreve in goals for Downham kept them at bay. The game was turned on its head in the 41 minute when Tobi Lawal was brought down as the last man by Hayden Baker and was given a red card. Lawal had been the one player who had been giving Stowmarket something to think about. One criticism of Stowmarket, who clearly have a good team is that they can be quite physical. Things got worse for Stow on the stroke of half time when Eoin Mc.Quaid scrambled the ball home to give Downham the lead going into the break. The second half saw Downham take control of the match with the man advantage, although chances were few and far between for both teams. At one point Downham had a two man advantage when another Stow player was sinbinned for 10 minutes, but they ...