RateTheRef

There was no problem with the bus this time, though by the end of the afternoon JCFC was rather wishing there had been.

Saturday 19thy November 2022
NPL Division 1 East
Brighouse Town   1   v   4   Long Eaton United.
Joe Moss; Alfie Finch-Critchley, Adam Gibbons.

Several weeks ago, in the aftermath of the defeat by Grantham, this had been picked out as Brighouse's next possible source of points. They made a decent start, and after 10 minutes JCFC remarked to his friend, that on the evidence so far, they had nothing to fear but mistakes. The more astute friend pointed out that the visiting winger was pacy.  Three minutes later he was proved correct, as the winger was largely responsible for Long Eaton's taking the lead - though in self-defence JCFC could point to an error of judgement by the young home keeper. The same two players were involved five minutes later in the visitors' second goal. The home defence continued to look frail, allowing attackers to run past or through them, but Town clung on until the 43rd minute, when Long Eaton scored an all-too-easy third. Brighouse got one back within a minute and hopes were briefly raised, only to be snuffed out within seconds by the visitors' fourth goal.

The second half was tedious in the extreme. Long Eaton did not need to try too hard, though they did create - and miss -  the best chance of the game. Brighouse waited until three-quarter time before their second shot on target, met with a good save by the keeper. They did hit the crossbar late on, but otherwise there was little incident.

Mr Moss offered less in the way of patter than some of his colleagues - or maybe JCFC's hearing is becoming as defective as his eyesight. He did scoot rapidly around the pitch - (maybe his dad once did?) - giving himself good angles to make crisp and correct decisions, allowing for little or no contestation. He might, perhaps, and arguably should, have shown a yellow for a high challenge that resulted in an injury to the Town striker's thigh. The card did appear towards the end - there must have been more to the nature of the foul than immediately apparent, as no Brighouse attack could be described as promising. JCFC's sympathy goes to the unfortunate Mr Observer, who had to find something to say about very good refereeing of a non-event. It would be good to see Mr Moss confronted with a more testing encounter, but maybe he has the knack of keeping things calm on the pitch.