Sat 13th Nov. Hellenic League Premier Division Corsham Town 0 Westbury United 1
Westbury made the short trip to the Southbank Ground in Corsham to face local rivals Corsham Town for their first ever meeting in the division.
Corsham were flying high coming into this, in what is their first season back at Step 5 (Hellenic Premier Division) since they were relegated from the Toolstation Western League in 2012.
The game started quite cagily, with the first chance falling to Corsham’s Higdon from a corner that he couldn’t get his head over, so his header looped up and over the bar to safety. Westbury’s first corner was met at the back stick by skipper Dan Price he kept his header down, but it went wide of the near post.
Corsham’s Morris had a good chance on the 15-minute mark, Higdon flicked the ball up over the Westbury defence and into his path bt with no time to wait for the ball to come down, his volley was too high. Five minutes later, Ryan Bole sent the ball forward from the left back position, Ricky Hulbert’s header was chested down by Callum Demkiv into the path of the advancing Ben Griffiths, Griffiths took a touch and then fired a 25 yarder goalward just over the bar.
Bole was involved again five minutes later, Joe Stradling was fouled just inside the Corsham half wide on the left, Bole swung a left footed curler into the area, it bounced up off a defender’s leg into the path of Dan Demkiv who got a solid header on it but the fast hands from Brown in the Corsham net saved well and held onto the ball. Hutch sent a freekick just over the bar on the half hour mark. With both defences on top the teams went in for half time at 0-0.
The second half began with a bit more urgency to the Westbury play, Dan Demkiv raced clear down the right-hand side and was brought down just to the right of the penalty area about 12 yards from the goal line; Bole stepped up and smashed a perfect left footed shot over the crowd of players and into the far side netting to give Westbury the lead on 50 minutes.
Westbury stayed on top and created the next chance, a left footed shot from Griffiths, from a similar position to were Bole scored his goal, which went just wide of the far post on the 70-minute mark. The remainder of the game saw both defences and midfields get back on top to see out the game without many sights of goal.
Star Man – Ryan Bole. Team; Bowden, S. Hulbert, Bole, Price ©, Hutchings, Shanley, Stradling, Griffiths, R. Hulbert, C. Demkiv, D. Demkiv. Subs: Kovacs, Cunningham, Biddiscombe (used) James, Timbrell (unused)
