Weymouth Mens A
Weymouth A 1 Haslemere B 1
Weymouth fought hard for a point against a strong Haslemere side. With both teams on 9 points, Weymouth was looking for a win to leap frog their rivals into second in the table.
The game was back and forth for the whole seventy minutes, with both sides creating enough chances to win two games. But a combination of a series of missed chances by the Weymouth strikers, Ellis and Wood, and another man of the match performance from
Keeper Dan Dukes kept the score at 1-1.
Haslemere spent the first 15 minutes camped in the home sides half. For all the away sides possession they failed to punish the Weymouth defence. The returning Dan Marsh and veteran Matt Walkden provided a strong defensive barrier against the attackers. When Haslemere did manage to create a clear opportunity, they were met by an inspired Dukes to keep the scores level.
A lapse of concentration lead to the opening goal, mid way through the first half, from a Haslemere striker who lost Steve Dymott and deflected the ball in past Dukes at his front post.
This goal seemed to wake Weymouth from their slumber and they were kicked into action from midfield duo Joe Foot and Jonathon Rowe. As another away attack broke down Foot picked the ball up on the left hand side and played a ball across the full width of the pitch to Rowe. Rowe beat one player and ran from the halfway line into the area and slipped the ball to Ben Wood, to score his fifth goal in five games past the advancing keeper, to send the scores in level at half time.
The second half was as open as the first with Marsh clearing a ball off the line from a short corner early in the half and the keeper making two crunching tackles on the forwards.
Weymouth had their chance to win the game late on when Ben Wood had a swing and a miss when open inside the area and when, the normally clinical Ellis, rounded the away keeping and hit the side netting.
Weymouth was also buoyed from a promising performance from the debutant Matthew Bain up front.