Re: FA Cup 2nd Qualifying Round - Dartford v Welling Sat 16 Sep 2023
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2023 10:23 pm
Although it wasn't anything special, at half-time I did feel that we had shown some improvement in the first half, knocking the ball about slightly better with fewer "ave it" launches into near orbit and maybe overall shading Welling's 6/10 performance with a 6½ of our own. During the interval I was wondering/hoping that maybe we could go on from here and perhaps this would be the start of a Darts revival. Looking back, I feel a little foolish to have been taken in by such a brief period of adequacy.
The second half saw Welling take control and Darts crumbled like a biscuit castle under siege by a Chieftain tank. Admittedly I was both delighted and a little confused when we briefly went 2-1 up but that goal, although well taken by Lewis, came from one of our more familiar long speculative punts and was completely against the run of play. After that, other than a little surge of micro-enthusiasm in the last 5 mins or so, we were pretty awful and showed very little backbone or character. Welling's inevitable equaliser came after their number 3 did what might as well have been 3 or 4 laps of the pitch without anyone putting in a challenge, before finally providing Papadopoulos with the opportunity to stick it away. At 2-2 we took it down another level and the inevitability of them scoring a third was so obvious, even David Blunkett would have seen it coming. It is heart-breaking to see how easily this team of ours falls apart as soon as something goes awry.
Oh well, Tonbridge Angels up next. See you all next week.
The second half saw Welling take control and Darts crumbled like a biscuit castle under siege by a Chieftain tank. Admittedly I was both delighted and a little confused when we briefly went 2-1 up but that goal, although well taken by Lewis, came from one of our more familiar long speculative punts and was completely against the run of play. After that, other than a little surge of micro-enthusiasm in the last 5 mins or so, we were pretty awful and showed very little backbone or character. Welling's inevitable equaliser came after their number 3 did what might as well have been 3 or 4 laps of the pitch without anyone putting in a challenge, before finally providing Papadopoulos with the opportunity to stick it away. At 2-2 we took it down another level and the inevitability of them scoring a third was so obvious, even David Blunkett would have seen it coming. It is heart-breaking to see how easily this team of ours falls apart as soon as something goes awry.
Oh well, Tonbridge Angels up next. See you all next week.