Gloucestershire County League

Saturday 5th October 2019

Kick Off 15.00 Actual 15.03

Wick 3 Ruardean Hill Rangers 2, attendance 33

3’ 0-1

52’ 0-2

59’ 1-2

83’ 2-2

85’ 3-2

@ Wick Sports Ground

Oldbury Lane

Wick

BS30 5RJ

No Admission

£1 Programme, 32 pages.

Last Saturday I had seen Wick knocked off the top of the league table, dropping down to third place, following a 1-0 defeat at Bromley Heath United. Today they were hosting Ruardean Hill Rangers who were in eleventh place coming into this match.

The visitors took an early lead and were never really put under any pressure so comfortably held their one goal advantage at the break. Their lead was doubled early in the second half, but instead of pushing for a third goal, which could have killed the game off, they decided to try and protect what they had and their ‘keeper should really have got at least one booking for blatant time wasting on every goal kick, but the Referee was too weak to do anything about it. The negative approach soon began to backfire. Wick scrambled in a goal just before the hour mark to pull it back to 1-2 and it totally turned things around. Somehow, the visitors held their slender lead for another 25 minutes as they were under intense pressure, but the equaliser deservedly came with seven minutes left. It took just another two minutes for Wick to complete the turnaround, when a shot on the turn saw them nick a 3-2 win which sends them back to the top of the league table.

According to the match programme, Wick have ambitions to go up to Step 6 football, but there would be a huge amount of work needed to make the ground grading. Apart from the lack of floodlights, seats, or any covered area whatsoever, their biggest problem is likely to be that the main pitch is separated from the changing rooms by a second pitch, which rather oddly is right outside the clubhouse. Perhaps they could swap them round to meet the necessary requirements?