Royston Town 2 Egham Town 2

CALOR ONE CENTRAL
TUES 11 MARCH 2014

ROYSTON TOWN 2 EGHAM TOWN 2
Reis Stanislaus (45+8)Marcus Moody (75)

1. Jamie Norris 2. Luke Muldowney 3. Jake Galbraith 4. Richard Byrne 5. Arran Taylor-Ives 6. Marcus Moody 7. Josh Andrew 8. Joe Chandiram 9. Reis Stanislaus 10.Maurice Harkin 11. Calvin Thomas 12. Andrew Crossley 14. James Ward 15. Brendan Matthew 16. Louis Chandler-Joseph 17. Ryan Lake

Last night Egham Town returned to Royston Town to replay the game they were winning 2-1 with fifteen minutes left before home player Jack Bradshaw went down injured, allegedly suffering a hip dislocation which turned out to be falsest of diagnoses; he was soon back in the Hertfordshire side's team and played all 105 minutes last night. The extra minutes, the same number as were left to play in the first match, were portioned into ten minutes in the first half and five in the second, and it was in the additional time in the first half that the first two goals came. The regulation 45 minutes had seen two well-matched sides not playing very well and cancelling each other out. Then, out of the night sky, the ball dropped and Reis Stanislaus produced one of the best overhead volleys you could ever wish to see to send the ball flashing past home keeper Nick Thompson. The euphoria of that moment lasted only as long as it took for Royston to go down the other end and for Arran Taylor-Ives to slide in for a tackle that was judged illegal and therefore gave Kaan Fehmi the chance to equalise - just, Jamie Norris was really unlucky not to save it - from the spot.
In the second half it was more of the same but Royston were getting on top when Reece Dobson's 54th minute shot hit Norris' right hand post. Another drive, by Denis Endacott, brought a good save from Norris. From the corner another Dobson effort again forced Norris into action, so it was somewhat against the run of play that Egham took the lead. Egham were heading the fairly pronounced slope when Marcus Moody took control of the ball, twisted away from two home players and fired goalwards, the ball taking a kindly flick off another home foot and leaving keeper Thompson flatfooted as it rolled in. That came with fifteen minutes left, fifteen minutes for Egham to get nervous in. Stanislaus pulled the ball back for an acrobatic volley by Josh Andrew, the shot not far off target, then, two minutes later, our second lead of the night was wiped out. Egham had taken the ball to the halfway line when Royston broke through at speed and in a flash Dobson had driven the ball past Norris. That gave Royston the impetus to attack again and when Norris was tempted out to the edge of his box he had to react quickly with his feet as Rob Mason threatened. Two minutes into injury time Moody was wide with a 30 yard shot on the run with home keeper Thompson yards outside his area. Finally, in the last minute, tempers reached boiling point for some when Jhai Dhillon deliberately ran across Andrew then went down like a sack of you-know-what, holding his head while his team-mates accused Andrew of illegal use of an elbow. That was rubbish, but it resulted in Mr I Rathbone giving the Egham man a yellow card. Given that the referee had in the dying embers of the first half given Endacott a yellow for diving in the Egham box he could justifiably have doled out the same punishment for Dhillon. It was clear from the look on Lee Passmore's face after the match that he was not happy to leave Garden Walk with only a point; leads blown and a lingering sense that the first one should have been allowed to play to its conclusion mean that there was disappointment rather than pleasure in a point against a side pushing for a play-off place.