Rolling Back The Years

Kettering came to Fortress Coldhams on Saturday afternoon - flying high at the top of the table with a sole defeat all season, against a mid-table Nomads team with 8 losses. However that doesn’t tell the whole story – as Nomads’ 2nd team had won all but one of their 8 home games this season, many of them comfortably.
After the aberration of a goal-less and significant defeat last week to the league’s 2nd placed team, Nomads 2s restored order with battling win over 1st placed, high flying Kettering, thus gaining revenge for the same scoreline, reversed, earlier in the season at theirs.

From 2-1 down with a quarter to go, a couple of cracking, vintage, Rich Lloyd hammer blows settled the issue in Nomads favour and rounded off a much improved performance from the 2s mixture of callow youth and sage experience. This was a Nomads team at featured no fewer than 5 under-17s, nicely complementing a similar number of players now nearer, or even beyond, their half century in years.

Traffic and football ensured a bare 11 Nomads at the push-back, with Lloyd standing in an unusual and unexpected central midfield position, whilst the Morts (young and old) readied themselves on the sideline. In fact from the start Nomads progressed sharply to the Kettering D and planted their first (of many) shots straight at the Kettering keeper. Lloydy, Paul, Tom, Julian, Will and Charlie all found themselves in the D with a keeper to beat at some point, and none quite managed to bring home the bacon.
So despite having the best of the 1st period, it was not until Paul helped Tom’s straight pass into the D on its’ way under the diving keeper, that Nomads finally took a deserved lead.
So 1-0 at half time was probably the least Nomads felt they deserved after a very solid 35 minutes.
Not unusually the period after half-time was Nomads worst of the game, suddenly finding it really difficult to keep possession of the ball and move away from their own half. No doubt Kettering were buoyed and looking dangerous. Eventually pressure told, and a smart shot from the top of the D nestled in the corner of Nomads’ net.

In quite what order these next events happened, I can’t confirm for certain. So in no particular order, Kettering thought they had scored, only to be taken back for a short corner as a whistle blew for an obvious defensive offence a split second before. Mel joined the club of missed chances firing inches wide with the goal beckoning at the end of a smart move, and within seconds, a 2-man Kettering overlap from the subsequent break yielded a shot that John tells me he had covered, before an unfortunate deflection of Ed’s trailing leg diverted it to the far corner. 2-1 Kettering.
With Kettering now on top, Nomads had a mountain to climb. Just one more chance, that’s all we hoped for, to salvage a point from a battling effort. And the moment came, the ball falling to Lloydy on the left of the Kettering D. The long way round the Kettering defence saw him reappear on the right of the D. With a brave, but cowering Kettering defender ill-advisedly protecting his goal-line, and the keeper stranded, the long serving Nomads striker fired a vicious rising shot over the stranded defender into the net.

With less than 10 minutes still to go, could either team muster a winner? That question was emphatically answered by a second Lloydy special. Once again progressing towards goal from left of the D, he negotiated a couple of desperate Kettering attempts to rob him of the ball before planting an absolute screamer over the startled, motionless keepers head into the roof of the goal. Absolute scenes. What a way to win a game!
MoM nominations went to John in goal for several solid saves, Leo at the back for his usual calm defending and Tom in midfield for a tireless effort driving the team forward. But really there could be only one winner – his two late strikes turning back the years and providing the decisive contribution to the end result. And so Nomads did get their revenge for the reverse fixture in a tight and enjoyable match against the league leaders.