Men's 2nds stalemate against March Town 3

South 2nds picked up what might proved a highly valuable point in their relegation battle, playing out a scoreless encounter against promotion chasing March Town 3rds.

South started the game strongly and dominated possession and territory in the opening ten minutes. Centre forward Matt Murray was seeing a lot of the ball in these earlier stages and, from his intelligent prompting, Mark Reilly found space for a flicked shot which looked like it had potential, only for the March keeper to pull off a neat save.

With March's coach shouting from the touchline for his team to snap out of their lethargy and wake up, the rest of the half was far more even. March continued to lie deep allowing South most of the play, attempting to hit back on the fast break. South's scrambling defence was persistent in their man-marking, if not always completely clean, with March winning a handful of short corners. However, the pace off the line in defending these of Sam Lansdell and Steve Lane hurried the March shooters, seeing the ball either cleared without a shot or pressured into shooting wide of target.

The second half began in similar vein, with South looking to exert pressure and March looking to hit hard and early into their front three. More strong defending from Lane, Lansdell, Jan Brynjolffssen and John Benedikz, with fewer inadvertent feet, saw March mainly restricted to reverse stick efforts from high-up in the D, while South wingers Tim Gass and Mark Reilly began to cause serious concerns down the March flanks. Halfway through the period South were inches away from breaking the deadlock from a short, Andy Lewis working the ball to Tim Waller, whose flick beat the keeper but was expertly knocked down, and then swept away by a March defender on his own goal line.

In the last ten minutes, March began to throw bodies forward in search of the three points they need for their promotion challenge, taking advantage as South's unaccustomed central midfield pairing of Waller and Ali Blake began to tire after a fine performance (centre forward Ali had done a sterling job out of position, see LoM for more details…). A number of half chances were flying around the South D, but the commanding presence of Steve Parker between the sticks swept up anything loose, seeing the match ending in an unusual (highly unusual for South 2nds!) 0-0 draw.

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