Eagley 2  Euxton Villa 0       15 November 08

Ok, not Villa’s best performance of the season, but not the worst either. However, having failed to test the keeper from open play whilst giving away two soft goals at the other end, the lads have only themselves to blame for failing to build on last week’s successful outing, even although they were without a couple of the key contributors to that victory.

Local gossip suggested that Eagley were able to field their strongest line-up of the season thus far, and indeed it was they who began the match on the front foot, showing flair and determination that belied their lowly league status. Kicking with the advantage of the slight slope, they enjoyed the lion’s share of territorial advantage for most of the first half hour, though neither side came close to breaking the deadlock during this time.

Then, just as Villa were beginning to suggest they might gain the upper hand, Ross Dickinson found himself wrong footed by the robust Grimshaw, and in a last ditch effort to halt his progress, thrust out a leg which the attacker made sure he fell over. The referee deemed it a foul, and given the relative position of the incident and surrounding players, further deemed it a ‘last man’ offence and brandished the consequent red car. To be fair there was little argument from Dickinson or his team-mates.  Despite Ross Baxter’s apoplectic ministrations to his defenders, keeper and wall seemed on a different wavelength, and Callow had little trouble in slotting the ball into the unguarded bottom left corner.

Villa have often struggled to take advantage when finding themselves a man up, so it was going to be interesting to see how they would fare with the boot on the other foot.  And indeed The lads did rally to the clarion call, with Gavin Cooper and Ian Kirkpatrick in the middle having a particularly industrious afternoon.  Cooper came closest to restoring parity shortly before the interval. A free kick twenty five yards out looked goal-bound all the way, but somehow the keeper got a strong hand on it to palm it onto the post and away. Less than two minutes later, another free kick from an almost identical spot again found Cooper able to find the target, but once again the keeper was equal to it and turned it behind for a corner.

It often happens that the team reduced to ten men are able to summon up extra reserves of effort and go to defy the odds, and the travelling support had seen enough in the last fifteen minutes of the first half to give suitable encouragement that that might be the case on this occasion. That is until the wheels came off two minutes into the second half. A mix up between Baxter and his defenders ended with the ball falling at the feet of Maitland, and the surprised right back was not about to pass up on the gifted opportunity.

Cooper again came close when he rattled the bar with a dipping shot a few minutes later, and perhaps if that had gone in, well, who knows. Playing for over an hour with ten men is hard enough without pressing the self-destruct button as well, and although the Euxton lads battled on gamely, there was no end product to complement their build-up play.

Next week sees Villa travel to Wren Rovers in a tricky fixture, which preludes an eight day spell which will make or break the season.