Buckland Athletic V Tavistock 29th August 2011

A very enjoyable afternoon in the sun was enjoyed by a reasonably size crowd who watched Buckland beat Tavistock by a very convincing score line of five goals to nil. But don’t let that score line fool you into thinking it was a walk in the park for the Buckland players as that was not the case and they had to work hard against a very over physical Tavistock side at times, especially during the first half of the match.

Have to agree with Bucklandgull about how good the pitch is looking at Homers Heath, once again credit must go to tufc01’s brother who works so hard and puts so much love into getting the pitch as near perfect as possible.

The first half was rather a tight affair and I felt for the first ten minute or so, Tavistock looked slightly the better side as Buckland failed to find the right sort of passes up to the front players. But for all their running and movement up front, Tavistock failed to really create any decent scoring chances and as the half wore on, Buckland started to find their game much better.

The ref I’m afraid was clueless and never seemed sure what decisions he should have been giving, he sure bottled one decision in my view that would have rightly seen Tavistock reduced to ten men halfway through the first half. Their player John James jumped into a challenged with Danny Gaze with both feet off the ground. Yes he got to the ball admittedly, but went through on Danny and the injury later caused Danny to be substituted.

There followed the usual handbags with a number of players from both sides pushing and shoving and pointing fingers and there were some very angry exchanges between both benches. The ref decided to only punish that disgraceful challenge with a yellow card, maybe he needs to reread the rules of the game Have to say the Tavistock manager loves to hear himself shouting his mouth off, only I do feel doing that never makes anyone look all that clever really.

Buckland took the lead and who scored the goal is still not fully decided, I believe it was Liam Moseley who had the ball at his feet in the Tavistock box, but then stumbled over the legs of a Tavy defender, I thought and so did Amy (told she is never ever wrong lol) the ball went in the net of Neal Kinsmen who was wearing the number two shirt for Tavistock. Young Mr Moseley ran away celebrating the goal as if it was his, but I do feel it was an own goal.

Danny Gaze went down again and it was clear he could not continue playing and so on came Anthony Lynch ( was it a bit too early for the old man to come on lol) and Buckland’s number eight, Danny Lewis went to the left back spot in place of Danny Gaze.

Tavistocks number eight Martin Sullivan then went into the ref’s book for a very strong and unnecessary body barge on Gary Fisher. Buckland took a two goal lead after a great through ball to Dean Stevens by the power packed Lian Moseley. Have to say I do like watching the way Lian gets stuck in and battles hard for his team mates.

Tavistock came out much in the same way in the second half that Buckland did a few weeks ago against Torpoint. They were certainly looking to get the ball to their front players much quicker and try and get a goal to get back into the game again, but never really tested the Buckland keeper to much. They did have one very good chance early in the half and Levi Landricombe only had the Buckland keeper to beat but fired the ball well over the crossbar. The more they pressed forward the more space they started to leave behind them for the likes of Anthony Lynch and Dean Stevens to exploit. Young Mr Lynch put one free header over the bar when it looked his effort had goal written all over it.

Buckland’s third goal once again in my view has to go down as an own goal by their keeper Andy Meads. Not to sure who played the long low ball into the Tavy box from out on the left, but the keeper went down got hold of the ball and then some how pushed it over his own line.

Anthony Lynch then made no mistake with the next heading chance that came his way, he planted the ball into the top right hand corner as the keeper tried hard to get his hand on the ball and stop it going into the net.

Goal number five came about after Anthony Lynch ran onto a long through ball but found himself going very wide of the goal to get a shooting chance himself, so he chipped the ball to the back post to Ben Cowlings who found himself standing there all alone for a simple header into the net.

I suppose one thing that does separate Buckland from so many other teams in this league, is they do take a high number of chances that they create. So for my four pounds I once again was treated to a very enjoyable match to watch and a good number of goals into the bargain. My next thing to do is buy one of those nice looking Buckland tea shirts, did not seem right wearing my Torquay United one in their ground.




















Handbags























Keeper error













Lynch scores