U15 South kick off the restart with a tricky away win

Everyone was keen to get back to playing football and none more so than U15 South, sitting 3rd in the league, 1 point behind 2nd and 8 points behind this weekend's opposition in top place but with a game in hand, so this was a classic '6-pointer' game that Harvesters eventually won in this fiercely contested season-reopener.

Going into this game our opponents, Bushey Rangers had won every game except one, which was a 1-1 draw against U15 South earlier in the season. This fixture was expected to be tight and that's exactly how it went. The opening exchanges were evenly shared with both teams trying to exploit the width of the big pitch and indeed it was through the outside right channel that the only goal of game came mid-way through the 1st half. Adam fed Luca (just back from 6 months out through injury) and using his left foot he curled a long range effort into the far bottom corner of the Bushey goal from just inside the box, catching the keeper out with the flight of the ball.

Bushey responded with several good 1st half attacks, but twice failed to find the target and at the third attempt, Harrison pulled off an amazing save to his right to deny a high, curling effort from Bushey that looked like an equaliser from the moment it left the strikers foot. Harrison judged the flight perfectly, shifting his feet slightly before diving to push the ball wide of his right post. 0-1 at Half time.

The second half saw Harvesters grow in confidence and created several really promising chances which resulted in shots straight into the keepers arms. Bushey became more and more frustrated as the pressure started to build on them to find a way back into the game and halfway through the 2nd half, a desperate but late challenge on Jack resulted in a yellow card and a 10 minute sin-bin for a Bushey midfielder, which allowed Harvesters to take more control of proceedings as we approached the last quarter of the game.

10 minutes to go and with Bushey now back to full strength, they threw everything they had at Harvesters and were almost successful when a long, probing ball over the top of the South defence, which initially looked like no threat with Angus is a good position to reach the ball first, he inexplicably tripped leaving the Bushey striker with a clear path to goal. As Harrison came off his line to cover the angle, out of nowhere appeared Ollie with full after-burners on. Ollie's slide tackle with his 'go go gadget legs' was perfectly timed to deny Bushey with the chance to equalise. The last 5 minutes were messy with Bushey turning the screw with several free kicks and corners but South held strong and went on the take the 3 points, go 2nd in the league and now are only 5 points behind top spot with a game in hand. 10 games to go!