22-0! Oh Dear!

I've said many times this season that I've felt for the college team at NNC, as they're up against sides of much higher calibre and should have probably been pulled from the league long before the day after this game. This match, their 5th and worst of them all, was eventually their last official one of the season.

Cutting a long story short, they were hammered 22-0 by a very well-oiled Derby College side. Surprisingly they did finish without any sendings off, not through a want of trying though as Wes, who I'd already sent off once and booked on another occasion, was initially booked for a bit of a kick out, before purposely handling the ball preventing a Derby attack. I just gave him a word though as the score was at 20-0 and there was just 5 minutes to play, and also NNC had already been reduced to 9 players after a mass of injuries. Certainly a red on another day though!

The match itself was easy to officiate. There were a couple of clear penalty decisions given in Derby College's favour, and the only other challenge faced was the earache I was being given by a young NNC full back who, from about 15-0 onwards was asking me to blow for full time in sympathy! I had to sternly tell him at one stage that I couldn't do this with his reply being "of course you can, you've got the whistle!" I simply informed him I was a football referee, not a boxing ref! I did feel sorry for them though. Hopefully, now they've been withdrawn from the league they'll face much closer opposition in future.

College boys beaten again

Taking NNC for their 4th game of the season, I'd hoped for their sake that they would fare better in this game but I didn't expect much. They were up against a Moulton College side who were struggling against the same opposition that NNC were being hammered against regularly so maybe both teams had awaited this game in the hope of getting something from it.

Moulton were the side that started the brightest and despite NNC keeping them at bay for the first 15 minutes, in typical fashion, once NNC went 1 down, heads dropped and they lost all shape and momentum. Moulton headed into the break 3-0 up and secured the same number of goals in the second half for a 6-0 win. There were positives that NNC could take from the game, not least the number of goals conceded were reduced than recent games, they also finished the game with all 11 for a change and also flirted with the opposition goal a couple of times, though couldn't manage to find their way into it.