Football Thornbury Town 1 Tuffley Rovers 2 THORNBURY Town entertained Tuffley Rovers at the Mundy Playing Fields on Saturday, looking to get back into winning ways following a less than satisfactory festive period.
Likewise Tuffley came looking to extend their winning run to five games and to push on into second spot in the league.
The game was played in wet muddy conditions following a number of heavy downpours.
This made for a game where neat passing football was not going to be the order of the day, especially through the centre of the pitch. Early exchanges went in Town's favour and with less than four minutes on the clock they took the lead when a corner from the right was met by Peter Fowler who reacted first to the ball in the six yard area and powered home a header for his second goal in three games.
Town could only hold this lead for a matter of minutes and Tuffley were level when some neat interplay was met by Wallington who shot past Farr in the Thornbury goal to level the scores. A number of half chances went begging at both ends during the first half, and the score remained at 1-1.
Both teams looked committed in the second period and a number of substitutions were made by both teams to freshen up tiring legs in the muddy conditions.
Francis Malala replaced his brother Kel up front for Thornbury who were looking for his extra pace to find away through the Tuffley brick wall defence.
On the hour Paul Taylor replaced Liam Broomfield for Thornbury, but his first attempt at contact with the ball connected with the ankle of a Tuffley player in the penalty area and the resulting spot kick was slotted into the left corner of the Thornbury goal by Surman.
From this period onwards Thornbury had Tuffley pinned in their own half looking for the all-important equalising goal.
A last throw of the dice by Thornbury manager Lippiatt with ten minutes remaining saw the introduction of 17 year old James Derosa who put a number of tantalising crosses into the Tuffley penalty area, which went begging for a final touch. A claim for a penalty from Town in the closing minutes was waved away by the referee and Tuffley held onto their slender 2-1 lead to claim all three points.
A number of good performances within the Thornbury team were eclipsed by man-of-the-match Gary Toal in his first game of the season.
Saturday sees the first team travel to top-of-the-table Hardwicke, whilst the reserves get back to playing ways with a trip to Uley with both games kicking off at 2pm.
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