MARLOW 2 BEACONSFIELD SYCOB 0

SYCOB's run of five consecutive victories was brought to a halt at the hands of local rivals Marlow who were good value for their win. In truth the margin of victory could have been a lot bigger as The Rams suffered an out of sorts day at the office.

Ex-SYCOB midfielder Marcus Mealing went close for The Blues on five minutes as both teams struggled to get a grip of the game in the first quarter of an hour. That changed on 16 minutes when a long kick by Marlow keeper Simon Grant (another ex-Ram) was misjudged by Lee Grant, letting in Blues goal machine Jon Bennett who made no mistake from ten yards.

That it remained at 1-0 at half time was down to a great 41st minute save by James Reading and a Marlow shot that cannoned off the  off the bar four minutes later. The Rams, oddly, failed to muster a single shot on target in the entire first 45.

The second half began with Jon-Jo Bates firing a great shot at Grant which the keeper managed to turn wide. However, on 51 minutes, after a foul by Tom McGarry on the edge of the Rams box Mealing curled a free kick over the wall and past Reading to give Marlow a deserved 2-0 advantage.

The Rams nearly pulled one back straight from the restart as Jon-Jo forced another good save out of Grant. John Christian also had a good effort but the main talking point came on 57 minutes when, after a rare Rams attack, a Marlow defender clearly handled in the area - almost caught the ball really - yet neither referee nor linesman saw it, the only people in the ground  who seemingly didn't. It just wasn't going to be SYCOB's day.

SYCOB played the last twenty minutes with only ten men as having used all three subs Craig Carby was forced off with an injury. The ten coped well enough without creating anything and were lucky to see Marlow miss a good chance on 80 minutes and indebted to another good save by Reading on the final whistle.

A blip hopefully, as there are another three games to go in a season that has still exceeded all expectations. This is a good team for sure, time to believe it now lads.

Come On You Rams

YCOB Team:

1. James Reading

2. Lee Grant

3. Ryan Phillips (Sub: Tom McGarry)

4. Brad Hewitt (Captain)

5. Craig Carby

6. John Christian

7. Tom O'Regan

8. Jordan Ajanlekoko

9. Jon-Jo Bates (Sub: Dean McDonald)

10. Nathan Webb (Sub: Kofi Lockhart-Adams)

11. Aaron Morgan

Subs Not Used:

14. Shaun Owens

17. Derek Lewis

Attendance: 133