Second-half revival too little too late

Moor Mead 4 Balham 3

Despite a strong second-half performance, Balham struggled against a direct side, and yet again had to try to rescue the match. The attitude going into matches needs to be much more focused; as has been commonplace this season, the Whites started poorly, with a string of mis-placed passes and opposition players left to roam free on too many occasions. All four of the goals were preventable, which adds to the disappointment, but the reality is that Moor Mead looked like they wanted it more - they applauded every tackle, were vociferous and supportive of each other throughout and chased down every ball. Balham nearly salvaged an unlikely draw, with a fourth correctly given offside despite confusion reigning between the referee and the linesman. With four defeats out of five, Balham's season is in a very sticky patch - the boys need to transform their approach to turn this around.

On a freshly laid astro pitch not fair from Twickenham, you could tell the match was in rugby country with some bizarrely positioned rugby posts directly behind the football goals resulting in a goal-line being positioned a couple of feet into the goal. With little time to warm up, you could tell that the boys' mindset was not right in the first few minutes with a string of misplaced passes and little tracking of runners. Both sides did hit the post early, Max's from a decent Balham move down the right, but it was no surprise when Moor Mead took the lead when the dangerous No. 7 was given a little too much time on the ball. In windy conditions, Balham put two throw-ins directly into touch which was symptomatic of how tough the boys were finding it. With the Whites creating nothing of any note, a killer second goal came with an opportunity to clear missed.

This did result in a mini-revival with Balham looking dangerous from corners. Jude's left-foot effort was just over from one, but Ty grabbed one back after heading against the post and following up the rebound with his knee. After such a poor start to the game, the Whites would probably have taken that at half-time, but disappoitingly conceded a third after a direct ball caused confusion between the defence and Jacob.

At half-time, the boys knew that they were not performing to expectations and to their credit, changed their attitude and approach in the second-half. Snapping into tackles more frequently, Balham went close a couple of times in the first few minutes from Jude and Wilbur, and showed that their passing game could create problems. Despite this, the home side all but wrapped the match up after a tentative defensive touch let their dangerous striker in who finished excellently.

The final few minutes of the match were all Balham and the boys created a series of chances. Patrick could not connect strongly with a chance in the box, but from the next attack the Whites pulled one back. The home side had been putting in a series of fouls and Balham looked incredibly dangerous from free kicks and corners. George's 30 yard free-kick rebounded back in to the goal off the keeper to make it 4-2 and it was almost instantly 4-3 when Wilbur's superb free-kick was headed over by George. The third did come from a scrappy corner which the CB sliced into Ty, but even then it felt too late. With two minutes to go though, Balham had the ball in the net again after another scramble in the penalty area. At one point it looked like the ball was over the line, but everyone played on despite the linesman having his flag up throughout. With Jude rifling the ball into the top corner, the referee initially looked like he had given the goal and ignored the linesman. After a couple minutes of discussion, it was ruled out though despite a series of protests and general confusion.