Hitchin Town at home.

Couldn't attend as is the norm these days so will leave the match analysis to you guys!! Head buried in books trying to finish an essay.   

Was just intrigued to know who went in sticks? I loves an outfield player in goal me! Lesser seen these days...

flexcavana wrote:Couldn't attend as is the norm these days so will leave the match analysis to you guys!! Head buried in books trying to finish an essay.   

Was just intrigued to know who went in sticks? I loves an outfield player in goal me! Lesser seen these days...

Oliver.

Shame Mr. Slater wasn't on the bench!

I'm not going to bother adding anything as Devil has pretty much summed it up.
One point I will raise.....At the moment I actually prefer the banter and laughs with fellow supporters than most of the football that gets served up...that's either that the company I keep is improving or the football is getting worse.

Tricky Tree wrote:I'm not going to bother adding anything as Devil has pretty much summed it up.
One point I will raise.....At the moment I actually prefer the banter and laughs with fellow supporters than most of the football that gets served up...that's either that the company I keep is improving or the football is getting worse.

Both are getting worse Tricky……….just at a slightly different rate :-)

flexcavana wrote:Shame Mr. Slater wasn't on the bench!

Wouldn't have made any difference, we'd already used all three subs by then.

Wasn't there, obviously, so difficult to comment in any depth. But a couple of things I would throw out to be agreed with or shot down as you all see fit...

How would you have seen the game had we not had the late let-down and won it 1-0? Glass half-full? Three points and a decent performance, all that was missing was the finishing to put it to bed?

Assume we played 4-4-2. How did that work without Leon in the middle? Has his "stock" as a defensive midfielder risen as a result of today's game? Somebody already touched on this but would be interesting to know what others think.

How did we look generally in defence? Not much to do by the sounds of it. Did Sansara improve the defence as a whole (if a left back can do that) or was it impossible to judge based on today's game?

Poor crowd in my mind, although the Baggies and Kiddy were at home. Given a lot of other local games were off, I had hoped for over 500. A bit apprehensive about Tuesday's crowd now.

A pity to get a feeling of resignation and weariness from some posters, though honestly can't say I'm surprised. Is it only a couple of weeks ago that we had back-to-back 7-0 and 5-1 wins? Or is that part of the problem in a daft kind of way - the highs and lows and the rarely-anything-in-between type of season we're having.

We need both a win and a good performance against Bedford now, with a bugger of a trip to follow on Saturday. I don't really know what would be worse on Tuesday - a poor display and a scrappy 1-0 win, or domination ending in a draw (or worse...). Not sure I can take either scenario. I suppose the points are the main thing but we all need a lift as much as anything. We need to see some signs of a proper upward curve - realistically four or five games with good, solid displays and no more than a couple of points dropped - rather than two steps forward and two steps back all the time.

Post by ChrisN on Hitchin's forum...

"Today was what being a Hitchin Town supporter was really all about.

How many said: "Nah, never get anything at Stourbridge, won't bother going there....."

Your loss. Went expecting nothing, and true Stourbridge should have buried us, but the work rate was unbelievable. We never gave up, we never said die and we got our reward. In truth we mugged them.

Keeper was a miserable so and so, but that aside, he had to body check Gary Wharton, because Gary's speed saw him nick the ball round the keeper and all he'd have had to do was roll it into an empty net. Didn't have much choice.

Simon Martin had a nasty shiner, think he just got caught by the defender, no malice intended.

Finally, would like to make mention of Nick Burtenshaw, who substituted for Lewis Rolfe second half and had a solid game at right back, didn't let us down at all. Well done Nick!

Thanks also to the Stourbridge folk who made us really welcome. If I would want any of the top teams to succeed for their fans, it'd be Stourbridge.c

So we all came away with a great upbeat feeling. Guess you had to be there really......."

And another...

"Chris, you beat me to it in the sense that what I have been dying to say since the final whistle to all those who wish they had been there today is "I bet you're sorry you missed it!

I would like to say a huge thank you to the whole of Stourbridge FC for the fantastic reception they gave to our players and supporters alike at today's game. From the programme sellers, to the man who opened up the club shop especially for me so I could bring back some Stourbridge memorabilia, to all all of the club's officials and supporters who are one highly professional unit at Stourbridge FC.

It cannot be emphasised enough that this was a really classic game of football where both sides just wanted to play the game. The red card aside, I felt this was the cleanest game I have watched this season. Stourbridge were fixed on getting the win as it meant it would bring them closer to the play offs but we were awesome in defence in refusing to say die and blocking every single attempt that Stourbridge threw at us in trying to get that second goal. The early Stourbridge goal was a very well taken goal by Luke Benbow and in the first 20 minutes or so of the second half they could have easily had another 2 or 3.

It goes without saying that we all wish Simon well in his recovery from his injury today. I couldn't quite see what happened but I was informed by those around me that it may have simply been an unfortunate accidental clash of heads.

Congratulations to Luke on his first appearance back today on his return from his injury earlier on this year.
Congratulations to all the players, to Mark and Adam and to all those supporters who made it up to Stourbridge today. Apparently, it is a Stourbridge tradition that on their final away game of the season they bring a large core of supporters with them and in their words "have a party". Lucky us, as we play them at Top Field on the final game of the season. Today's result in the first game of 2014 can only bode well for the rest of the season. But for now I think some of us are still in shock and pinching ourselves that we came away with which on paper was a draw but in reality what was really the equivalent of 3 well earned and hard fought points."

It is nice to read the compliments about Stourbridge football club.

I have to laugh though......Jim halfway through the second half..."somebody please remind me to open the club shop after the game for some Hitchin fan who wants tobuy some stuff,you know what my memory is like"

Well remembered Ulster.....

Agree with what has already been said apart from the first sub gary made. After the sub we went 4 5 1 obviously to defend what we had. Even though I dont like 4 5 1 sometimes it works.

For me it was the personal that we used to create that 4 5 1.

Have nothing against Knight but I dont think he is the one to play upfront on his own. Would have preferred luke up front and then bring Jamie on to play the holding midfielder for the rest of the match.

If it had finished 1-0, I would have gone home saying 'how did we not score loads more' not ' we were lucky to hang on'.   

I never felt they were likely to score and it was poor finishing from several players that let us down yesterday. Other games we have not made the chances - yesterday we did. There was good periods of passing and we were unlucky at times. Their goal should not have mattered had we taken the chances but alas it did.

Dont think its the end of our playoff chances though.

Felt really gutted at the final whistle as like others I felt we should have been well ahead by then and the result felt like a defeat. Looking back now we played some good football especially in the second half when we completely overran them at times , created a number of chances but failed to put the ball the net. To me it showed just how much we miss Leon in midfield when the opposition has the ball. I also thought Netan impressed, especially his crossing from the byeline. But credit to Hitchin they defended bravely and counter attacked well, particularly first half. I still believe the play offs are reachable, but we do need a couple of wins to pick up some momentum and confidence.

MotM was Netan with 11 votes, Luke received 6, Sean 4, Will 2, Nathan & Kayleden 1.
Wine was won by Ian Binner

TRM wrote:Wasn't there, obviously, so difficult to comment in any depth. But a couple of things I would throw out to be agreed with or shot down as you all see fit...

How would you have seen the game had we not had the late let-down and won it 1-0? Glass half-full? Three points and a decent performance, all that was missing was the finishing to put it to bed?

A deserved win that could and should have been more.

Assume we played 4-4-2. How did that work without Leon in the middle? Has his "stock" as a defensive midfielder risen as a result of today's game? Somebody already touched on this but would be interesting to know what others think.

I do think sometimes that Leon is bypassed a bit in the centre but he would certainly have been better on Saturday. I wasn't 100% convinced by Fitz in the centre.

How did we look generally in defence? Not much to do by the sounds of it. Did Sansara improve the defence as a whole (if a left back can do that) or was it impossible to judge based on today's game?

Not too bad to be fair. Sansara didn't put a foot wrong at left back and whilst Haynes didn't bomb forward as much as he did against Redditch, he did well. Bennett and Richards as reliable as ever in the centre.

Poor crowd in my mind, although the Baggies and Kiddy were at home. Given a lot of other local games were off, I had hoped for over 500. A bit apprehensive about Tuesday's crowd now.

There's a lot of home games in January, so I wasn't too surprised. It did attract a fair few groundhoppers along, so maybe the usual Stour support was a bit down due to the number of games in January.

A pity to get a feeling of resignation and weariness from some posters, though honestly can't say I'm surprised. Is it only  a couple of weeks ago that we had back-to-back 7-0 and 5-1 wins? Or is that part of the problem in a daft kind of way - the highs and lows and the rarely-anything-in-between type of season we're having.

We need both a win and a good performance against Bedford now, with a bugger of a trip to follow on Saturday. I don't really know what would be worse on Tuesday - a poor display and a scrappy 1-0 win, or domination ending in a draw (or worse...). Not sure I can take either scenario. I suppose the points are the main thing but we all need a lift as much as anything. We need to see some signs of a proper upward curve - realistically four or five games with good, solid displays and no more than a couple of points dropped - rather than two steps forward and two steps back all the time.

I'm not too downbeat, exactly half way through the season and 39 points. In theory then, that's 78 points at the end of the season which you couldn't exactly complain about! I'm sure Gosport were around and about where we are now at this point last season, there's still an awful lot of games to go and 66 points up for grabs. Lets keep the faith for a little while longer I say!

We should have won the game comfortably,2 glorious goalscoring chances wasted & we pretty much dominated possession.

Strangely though we did seem very nervy defensively when Hitchin approached our goal.

I agree that Dean `took one for the team`.I thought Jamie did well to get close to the resulting free kick.

Both Luke & Sean seemed easily riled during the game,2 very good players for us that need to channel any sense of injustice in the right way.

Can`t say we really missed Leon as we had most of the play anyway.

I thought we looked complacent during the 2nd half,as though the job had been done.Wrong move to put Luke to the right-although Ben faded during the 2nd half he was gliding by the left back with ease during the 1st half.

Good to see that both our fullbacks are strong going forward & comfortable on the ball,without any natural width we need to utilise them
more.

Our squad does look a bit thin to me though,fingers crossed that Gary can add to it.

For the most part we played quite well.
Superb build up for our goal.
Didn`t take our chances and paid the price.