With several players suffering minor niggles, Gary Johnson chose his strongest available line-up to start the match against League One Second Division side AFC Bournemouth as the South Coast club looked to gain some pride back following last season's 2-0 cup defeat.

The game definitely took a while to warm up. James Hayter produced a strong save from Steve Collis as he grabbed the ball at the foot of his post whilst a Gavin Williams right wing cross had to be hacked away by a Bournemouth defender to avoid Keize Ibe getting on the end of one at the back post. Several early head injuries seemed to disturb the general flow of the game which looked pretty enough in midfield from both sides but was lacking any real penetration. Derek Holmes should have done better when a bit of ping-pong round the Yeovil penalty box saw the ball land at his feet but he stabbed the ball wide of the right-hand post from close range.

Midway through the first half, Bournemouth had a goal ruled out for off-side. A shot through a crowd of players saw Steve Collis fail to grab the ball at the first attempt, but as the ball ran loose, up went the linesman's flag, and Wade Elliott was deemed to be the guilty party as his stab home was ruled out - with the former Bashley player clearly stood in the Yeovil goalkeeper's view on the original shot.

Yeovil's own attacks up to this point had looked fairly toothless - balls across the box not quite connecting with Ibe and Gall, or fairly tame looking attempts being scooped straight into the arms of visiting keeper Neil Moss. Paul Terry sent one wide of the post but that was about it until 27 minutes into the game where Yeovil suddenly hit a purple patch, striking the Cherries' woodwork twice in five seconds.

An Adrian Caceres corner was hit deliberately deep and wide to Gavin Williams and as the Cherries defence pushed out, Terry Skiverton beat the offside trap from Williams' lob back in and smashed a shot against the underside of the crossbar. As the ball bounced out and all the exiting bodies rushed back in, Scott Guyett was the first to get there but his header looped over Moss and once again the woodwork denied Yeovil.

From another Yeovil corner, this time from Gavin Williams, Adrian Caceres set up another chance a minute later when he smashed a ball in low across the face of the area, and Neil Moss was fortunate to grab the ball as it deflected off his own defender. Then as the Bournemouth defence continued their collectively mad five minutes, Kevin Gall was allowed to slip past their somewhat flakey looking offside trap but his shot went just wide of the left hand post.

With Yeovil now looking far more buoyant, and Adrian Caceres in particular launching some find attacking runs in tandem with Michael Rose, it was probably only fair that the Glovers grabbed the lead just before the half time break, even if the move didn't quite come from the training ground. Keize Ibe misjudged his header on a Kevin Gall cross and ended up doing an inadvertant one-two with the Welsh striker, but Gally's short pass across the box to Simon WEATHERSTONE saw a more true contact with the ball, and despite Moss getting a hand to it, Yeovil went ahead with the last kick of the half.

No changes made by either side at half time but with the second half setting a similar pattern to the first, Bournemouth were the first to react, bringing on no less than five substitutes ten minutes into the half, including one Dani Rodrigues, who was greeted with a chorus of boos for the way that he left Huish Park without the grace of saying a word of thanks to the club who had helped relaunch his career.

As the Cherries reorganised, Terry Skiverton struck the woodwork for the second time as his looping header bounced off the top of the bar. Roy O'Brien took to the field as Yeovil's first substitution to a huge roar of approval whilst French trialist Nicholas 'Myers' took to a midfield position with Simon Weatherstone pushing up front.

Marcus Browning showed that Bournemouth still contained plenty of threat when he forced a good save out of Steve Collis from long range, but at the other end Nicholas 'Myers' was forcing his way through the Bournemouth midfield unleashing a powerful 30 yard drive that had substitute keeper Gareth Stewart beaten, and only a late curl of the ball denied him a sensational start for his Yeovil career. 'Myers' also picked off a pass for Kevin Gall, whose superb right wing cross saw Simon Weatherstone almost grab his second, as his header wrong-footed Stewart.

The one rule of thumb you can always count on in football though is that past players always come back to haunt their former teams. Whilst Dani RODRIGUES scored a sensational opener when he first visited Huish Park last season, his equalising goal owed more to being in the right position than knowing much about it. Warren Cummings issued a shot that might have even gone in directly, but Rodrigues, stood in a suspiciously offside position, got his legs in the way and the result was that the ball pinged into the opposite corner giving Collis little chance.

In a sea of substitutions, Yeovil just seemed to lose their way a little, and it seemed inevitable that the game would fizzle out into a 1-1 draw. But Bournemouth seemed to be the side with the edge as certain Yeovil players faded slightly and numerous Under 18s players were introduced.

Two such players were Dale Williams and Dan Bulley. The two players, operating as a striking pair, thought they had grabbed a winner when Williams beat Stewart to a cross, and Bulley hooked the loose ball home. But the match referee - one Trevor Kettle, who else? - deemed Dale's challenge to be an illegal one and the goal was chalked off.

One player had the last laugh though. In the 91st minute, Stephen Reed gave away a free kick on the corner of the box, and as Warren Cummings flighted the ball into the area, Dani RODRIGUES was able to seriously subdue the boo-boys as he took advantage of a loss of concentration by Steve Collis, allowing him to chest the ball down and fire home from close range, with seemingly little in the way of a Yeovil defence around to trouble him.

Despite the last minute defeat though, this was a good work-out that gave Gary Johnson plenty of positives, even if some of those positives - Careres in particular - seemed to fade a little following the hour mark. There is room for improvement there, but with Bartosz Tarachulski, Yemi Odubade and Phil Jevons yet to be introduced to the Huish Park crowd, there is plenty to look forward to over the next three weeks.

Badger

Back to Top of Page