BAD CONDITIONS + BAD REFEREE = INJURIES!!!!!!

In our recent fixture vs Crown from the Sunday League Division one, we travelled the very short distance to Monkmoor Recreation Grounds, the grounds housed two pitches, one pitch was deemed un-playable because of overnight rain and the fact there was a Saturday fixture played on it the day before hand. The second pitch was deemed playable (only just!). There was another fixture as well as ours at these grounds today and TSFC's match took priority because the referee for our fixture was travelling a great distance than the other.

Once our referee arrived he also agreed that the one pitch could take a game of football.

The rain continued to batter the surface for at least the first half and it left a painful expression on manager Andy Waters' face whilst watching the opening minutes.

Andy gave a run out to players that had not had much playing time as of late due to the last two league games being good results and today was a good opportunity to see just how much strength in depth this team had with the fixture being a cup game.

However the one worry had to be the fact that we all know the opposition, very tough tackling, add that to the very heavy/boggy pitch and the last thing you need is injuries with still a lot of the league campaign to come.

As you can imagine tackles were flying in, the conditions brought out the idiots and with some very poor, soft refereeing TSFC were left with 4 injuries and finished the game with 10 men! On top of that the opposition didn't even pick up a single booking!
"It has dampened a very good result and performance. The lads and I knew the possible outcome before kick off but you put faith in the man in the middle to protect your players in games/conditions like these and that wasn't the case today. Centre half Phil Jones limped off with bad bruising and a swollen dead leg from a high challenge within 20 minutes and we never even got a free kick. Then Club Captain Craig Swain limped off with an ankle injury, followed by Nick Jones another ankle injury and then another ankle went when Nick Best was brought down in a goal scoring position and again the referee gave nothing. But thinking about the last foul the ref couldn't really give anything because he struggled to keep up with play as he was more than 35 yards away when the incident happened. Great result though, through to the next round of a cup we should do well in, but at a cost to our league ambitions? Maybe, we have to re-group, got a huge game against Ruyton next week and hopefully 2 out of the 4 injuries we received today could be shaken off in time, however Nick Best has gone to Hospital, seems it will take a miracle for him to be fit for the Ruyton game and Phil Jones is a massive doubt as currently he can't even bend his leg!"

Manager Andy Waters in a very mixed mood after the fine result for TSFC in the cup yesterday.