AFC Totton
PRE-SEASON FRIENDLY #6
Saturday 22 July 2023 | Snows Stadium, Totton | Att: 583
GLOVERS TRIUMPH IN TIGHT PRE-SEASON TUSSLE WITH TOTTON
AFC TOTTON 1
Matty Burrows 71mins
YEOVIL TOWN 2
Rhys Murphy 2mins; Olly Thomas 66mins
AFC TOTTON
Starting XI
1. Lewis NOICE
2. Benny READ
3. Jordan RAGGUETTE
4. Mike CARTER (Capt.)
5. Charlie KENNEDY
6. Luke HALLETT
8. Adam TOMASSO
10. Ethan TAYLOR
15. Sam MAGRI
16. Alfie STANLEY
18. Jake SCRIMSHAW
Substitutes
7. Charlie DAVIS
11. Matty BURROWS
12. Josh CARMICHAEL
14. Leo TAYLOR
17. Conor WHITELEY
20. Owen PELHAM
THAT WAY, LADS: AFC Totton goalkeeper Lewis Noice points the way.
VISITORS YEOVIL TOWN triumphed in a tightly contested encounter on a rainy summer’s afternoon at the Snows Stadium on Saturday 22 July.
AFC Totton were without their talismanic centre-forward Scott Rendell, who has been coaching at the prestigious Gothia Cup youth tournament in Gothenburg, Sweden this week. New signing Jake Scrimshaw came into the side for the first time, to face the club with whom he began the 2022/23 season before a short stint at Eastleigh.
It didn't take long for the higher division team to nudge themselves ahead. Yeovil’s Frank Nouble pounced on Benny Read’s misplaced pass early on. Jordan Maguire-Drew received the ball and took aim with a shot that was blocked. It fell kindly for Rhys MURPHY to put the Glovers ahead. Shortly after, Murphy drove a shot against Stags’ keeper Lewis Noice’s legs.
Ethan Taylor won possession and advanced down the left. He then checked inside and picked out Read on the opposite corner of the penalty area. A short lay-off teed up Tomasso for a right-footed drive that Yeovil keeper Will Buse saved low to his left.
Taylor came close to equalising before half-time, when he curled a free-kick narrowly over from 25 yards. And when the visitors threatened once more before the break, ex-West Ham striker Nouble played Jordan Maguire-Drew in behind Magri but Ragguette sprinted round on the cover to execute a perfectly-timed sliding tackle.
CHA CHA SLIDE: Jordan Ragguette has got the moves to shake off Yeovil's Zachary Bell.
HALF-TIME: AFC TOTTON 0-1 YEOVIL TOWN
Early in the second half, Taylor galloped clear of his marker on the left wing to latch onto Ragguette’s sweeping pass from deep. Seeing Buse off his line, Taylor went for the lob but chipped his shot just a little too high.
AFC Totton debutant Jake Scrimshaw had a glorious opportunity to score against his former club when Josh Carmichael’s through-ball sprung him clear into a one-on-one with Buse, but the keeper kept his nerve to make the block at the edge of his area.
NEW MAN: Striker Jake Scrimshaw made his unofficial AFC Totton debut against one of his former clubs in the shape of Yeovil Town at the Snows Stadium.
Zachary Bell spurned the chance to extend Yeovil’s lead when he intercepted Charlie Kennedy’s poor pass out from defence but the midfielder blazed his shot over the bar.
Yeovil threatened with several promising moves down their left, particularly whenever left-back Alex Whittle, Nouble and The Glovers’ No.10 Maguire-Drew combined. One high curling cross towards the back post by Maguire-Drew, after he’d demonstrated tricky feet to dance his way past three blue shirts on his way to the left-wing byline, had to be headed away from almost under the crossbar by the impressive Ragguette.
After several substitutions from both sides, the visitors stepped up a gear. The Stags put up stubborn resistance until substitute Olly THOMAS capitalised upon a trialist pressing Totton down the middle, the Yeovil No.40 finding himself in space in the box when the ball rebounded to him to fire past Noice and into the bottom-left corner, doubling the Glovers’ advantage on 66 minutes.
TOUCH TIGHT: Mike Carter (left) and Yeovil goalscorer Olly Thomas get up close and personal.
Totton halved the deficit five minutes later. Ragguette raced onto a left-wing through-ball, holding off the defender long enough to glance into the middle and direct a low, powerful cross into the path of the incoming Matty BURROWS, who got ahead of the defender and side-footed past Buse into the bottom-right corner of the net.
Yeovil responded by opening Totton up, again. An intricate passing move through the middle played Thomas into a similar position from which he had earlier scored, but this time he dragged his low rasping effort wide of the left-hand post.
Former Testwood School pupil Matthew Worthington, wearing the Yeovil No.8 shirt, almost got on the scoresheet with an angled drive from 20 yards that went wide. And Charlie Davis had a late half-chance to make it all-square, when the ball came to him in the inside-left channel after energetic pressing work by Burrows and Scrimshaw, but the midfielder fired over without troubling substitute goalkeeper Lewis Williams.
After the match, AFC Totton Manager Jimmy Ball (pictured) said:
"As I've been stressing since our pre-season programme began, these matches are all about fitness and performance rather than the results. We are all competitive and we want - and we try - to win every game we play. But we came up against a very good side who are managed by somebody I know well and know to be an excellent football coach. We had two lapses in concentration and they punished us for it, as good teams do, but if my team performs like that in our division this season, I won't have many complaints.
"The flow of the game does become a bit fragmented when both teams are introducing one substitute after another, but as a coach watching from the dug-out, you can still learn things about how well your team adapts to the changes being made by the other team, so it is a useful exercise.
"Hamworthy United will give us another tough game next weekend. They were one of the toughest teams we played last season, they gave us two very difficult games home and away. I expect them to seriously challenge in that division this season, now that they've been able to secure a temporary home at Weymouth while their own ground is sorted out, and I expect them to give us another tricky game on Saturday. It will be interesting to see how well our lads, with some of our newer players in there, can perform against The Hammers."
AFC Totton's Fixtures for 2023/24
Next Up: AFC TOTTON vs Hamworthy United | Pre-Season Friendly #7 | Snows Stadium, Totton SO40 2RW | Saturday 29 July 2023 | Kick-Off at 3:00pm
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By Ben Rochey-Adams
Images courtesy of Craig Hobbs Photography
