Emley 3-3 Rossington Main

Emley 3-3 Rossington Main
Northern Counties East League (Division One)
Saturday 10th October 2020

This was a well-fought, hard-earned and ultimately 'deserved' point for Rossington Main against an Emley team who are currently perched at the top of the NCEL Division One table. 

Skipper Jason Stokes bagged two goals to underline his importance to this team, whilst Jack Watson was also on target from a performance where the overall positives outweighed the negatives.

It was a strange, action-packed and sometimes frantic, end-to-end affair with Rozzo starting much the brighter and taking the lead midway through the first period when Watson was slipped through into a one-on-one from which he converted.

Emley, backed by a noisy home crowd, quickly upped the ante with Callum Fielding forced into action for the first time when he tipped a low 20-yarder wide before an equaliser came when Aiden Savory forced the ball home following a corner which was only partially cleared away.

The turnaround was then completed on 41 minutes when some more hesitancy and inability to effectively smash the ball away to safety at a set-piece culminated in a top-left corner finish by Dominic Riordan from inside the box, but Rozzo weren't going to lay down and just accept defeat without putting up a fight and Stokes levelled from close-range to make it 2-2 at the interval.

Though Emley dominated large swathes of the second half, played on the front foot and were in the ascendancy more often than not - going close on 56 minutes when a free-kick rattled the upright, Rozzo have been something of a thorn in their side in recent meetings - hence why they were five unbeaten against their opponents prior to this clash - and it was the visitors who bagged next through a Stokes thunderbolt from 20 yards!

Nevertheless, just as was the case after the opener, the table-toppers went 'Gung Ho' in search of another equaliser with Rossington somehow surviving an almighty goalmouth scramble where one shot was blocked, another cannoned back off the base of the post and then Fielding saved a third follow-up attempt all within the space of just a few seconds.

Yet from the resulting corner (again!), the hosts forced the ball home - finding empty space beyond the far-post to play the ball back into the middle from where Sam Pashley was the player who was in the right place to scramble a shot over the line to get his name on the score-sheet and make it 3-3.

Thereafter, in the final quarter of the game, it was largely all Emley, but they were thwarted due to a combination of decent saves, inaccurate finishing, good defending and sometimes simply bad luck or just the wrong decisions in certain positions. 

They threw the proverbial 'kitchen sink' at trying to find a winner but it wasn't to be and Bobby Faulkner's introduction without about a quarter-of-an-hour to go when Rozzo opted to tighten things up by going to three centre-backs, plus Josh Meade's cameo late on when he took up a defensive midfield position and immediately instilled some organisation, helped to earn the visitors a point.

It was actually Meadey's first game back since suffering an ACL injury over a year ago and though it was only for five minutes (and given he's played at a higher level too), the importance of what he brought in that period can't be understated.

On the whole, the positives from this display outweigh the niggling negative of shipping three very similar goals - something which is a justified cause for concern and has to be improved. 

There's enough young players in this squad with decent enough potential; 'Mascher' (Bailey Conway) being the pick of the bunch yesterday, who've collectively got the ability to put a team to the sword sooner or later and get a result which their performance deserves.

So the task now for this group of players is surely to build upon and extend a one-goal advantage when they establish one and also translate a good team performance into three points - starting in their next fixture, in midweek, when they host a Glasshoughton Welfare team who've lost all four of their opening league games (albeit three of them by a solitary goal).