Briantree Town 1 – 2 Wealdstone

Braintree Town 1 Wealdstone 2

by David Ward

This was a game of the proverbial two halves – the Iron dominating the first, scoring an early goal but missing four or five clear-cut goal scoring chances and then the second half saw the visitors on top as the Iron players gave away two dreadful goals and spent most of their time hoofing long balls up to tall defenders and no their passing game..

In reality the Iron should have had the game wrapped up by half time but like so often this season they simply couldn’t find the net and then paid for it in the second half when all too often passes when astray straight to their opponents and a lack of cohesion and movement allowed the visitors to gain the upper hand.

Matt Robinson had given the Iron a brilliant start on six minutes with a well taken goal and they continued to constantly rip the visitors’ rearguard but wasted so many chances and fans in the 888 crowd knew that a one goal wasn’t going to be sufficient and that’s how it turned out.

The longer the second half went on the more assertive the visitors became and they started to split open the Iron defence with every attack.

The visitors equalised on 73 minutes when a dreadful mistake by young keeper Henry Gray who, in trying to grab a high cross from the wing, should have punched the ball away but he ended up in the net with the ball giving the visitors their equaliser.

Spurred on by their new found pressure the visitors naturally pushed forward again and although Gray did well to save one goal bound shot with his legs simply poor defending allowed Josh Grant to squeeze the ball home on 77 minutes for what would turn out the winning goals.

There can be no excuses though for such a sloppy, undisciplined second half showing and the management will need to get the players to uplift their game for their away match at Sutton Utd on Saturday.

To complete a bad second half for the Iron James Vennings was show a yellow card on 73 minutes and then stupidly picked up another four minutes later when he was shown a red leaving the Iron no chance to get back into the game with a possible equaliser.