Dorchester Town Story — September 2009

Hello dear friends, welcome back to the Dorchester Town lower league Football Manager 2010 story! My fist season in Blue Square South started pretty well, the new bunch of players produced a few good performances and earned quite a few wins for the club. We did lose two games though, both away from home and both 3-0. I guess you’re curious to see how things went in September, I was too ;)

The first game was away at 12th placed Worcester, an in-form team that was enjoying a four match unbeaten run. We got off to a great start as right winger Domondi banged one straight into the top corner from inside the box but then we had to defend. We did that well until 33 minutes, my centre backs were showing so much confidence that they started passing the ball around inside our own box! You guessed right, the ball was intercepted and the first half ended all square. We resumed our attacking game after the break and it took us only nine minutes to get back on track, striker Almani broke through the offside trap and placed it in. Then we controlled the match until the final whistle, a well deserved victory.

We went back to the Avenue Stadium for the next game, 8th placed Havant & Waterlooville were coming to pay us a visit. We took the game to our opponents during the first half, they couldn’t cope with our passing game and we deservedly scored two goals in the first 45 minutes. The second half was a bit more balanced but we managed to score another goal with a powerful shot from the edge of the area. I have to admit though that most keepers in the world would have saved that shot :)

We had another home game coming up against 19th placed Welling and it was quite important since the board picked it for a fan day. We had a few more spectators than we usually do, 588 people, and my players seemed to feel under pressure: we were dominating the game but the finishing was annoyingly wasteful. The flood gates finally opened after we scored the first goal so we banged in another couple in the next eight minutes, the fans were quite happy with our display. I hope they’ll be coming again to watch us play, maybe they’ll bring a few friends with them, there’s plenty of room as we can accommodate more than 5000 people in the stands…

The last league game of the month was away at 15th placed Bishop’s Strotford, I was hoping to add another win to our good run. The players were full of confidence and they turned the first half hour into a living hell for the opponents. Left winger Alexandru Gheba was totally unleashed, I think that the opposition right back will remember him for quite some time: he banged in two goals and his runs were creating panic in their defense. Our spectacular style didn’t impress the referee though, he showed us seven yellow cards during the first half, two of them to the same player, centre back Ryan Carolan. We were down to 10 men but we managed to keep the defense tight and walked away with another three points.

Former leaders Dover dropped quite a few points this month so we bounced up to the top of the table! I guess I have to think about promotion now but I think we’re bound to have some setbacks in the next few months, we’ll see about promotion in December.

We had another game to play before the end of the month, the FA Cup second qualifying round against Isthmian D1S side Horsham YMCA. The opponents were rather poor and I guess my players had the wrong attitude on the pitch, they seemed overconfident and playing much worse than usual. Our opponents did their defensive job well so they earned the right to play the game again a few days later.

Before the replay the board announced that they decided to inject a few pennies into the club, that’s always a nice thing to hear. We still are 250,000 pounds in debt though so the financial situation is not looking good at all.

We had to play Horsham YMCA again and I chose to rest most of the first team regulars, the backup players had to prove their worth. We had a rather poor first half but managed to settle things after the break thanks to another goal from right winger Carol Domondi. We could have scored a few more but that’s how it ended, the finishing was quite poor yet again.

We’ll get to meet Horsham FC in the next round, they don’t seem to be any better than their mates from YMCA. October will end with an important game against Dover, I don’t know why it was scheduled so early since we just played away against them in August.

That’s how it went folks, I was quite pleased with the four straight wins and I can only hope that we’ll keep on winning in the next games. I’m thrilled that the clown acts in defense stopped after the first game, I hope my defenders will remain as reliable as they were in the last games. Thanks for reading, stay tuned for the next update! ;)