Hampshire Premier League

Division 1

Saturday 7th December 2019

Kick Off 14.00 Actual 13.58

Kingsclere 3 Queens Keep Southampton 2, attendance 17

12’ 1-0

45’+1, 2-0

52’ 2-1

67’ 3-1

84’ 3-2

@ The Fieldgate Centre

Field Gate Drive

Kingsclere

RG20 5SQ

No Admission or Programme.

I am assuming the road was built before the building, so it is odd that the road is named Field Gate Drive, but the centre is Fieldgate. Must make sense to somebody. Anyway, this was my second choice of match today, as I had originally planned a double in East Sussex, but the first part of it was postponed quite early on, so it was on to plan B.

Kingsclere won Division 1 of the Andover & District League last season, winning all 10 matches, in what was just a six team division. They have had a bit of a mixed start to life at a higher level, currently sitting in eighth place in the league table (out of 12), whilst visitors Queens Keep are fourth, looking to bounce back from being relegated from the Senior Division at the end of last season, having finished second from bottom.

This was real end to end stuff, on what was a very soft pitch, with both teams looking much better going forward than they did defending.Both teams squandered chance after chance, but Kingsclere went into the break with a 2-0 lead, but it could easily have been QK that were in front. The visitors pulled back an early second half goal, but when Kingsclere went 3-1 up with just over twenty minutes left, it looked all over. QK got a second goal, with a superb volley from the edge of the box with six minutes left and pushed hard for an equaliser. They headed in a leveller in the last minute, but this was disallowed for offside, wrongly in my opinion, but a Club Linesman will always give a decision to benefit his own team, rather than a ‘fair’ view, so Kingsclere hung on to take the three points.