Tuesday 25th April 2006
errea (Southern League) Cup - Final - Second Leg
Bromsgrove Rovers 1 Hitchin Town 2
Hitchin Town win 3-1 on aggregate
By Phil Baker

More than a few eyebrows were raised when Rovers lined up for this match with Matt Johnson positioned in the centre of defence, Exodus Geohaghan up front with Neil Davis, Wayne Dyer out on the right of a five-man midfield with Daire Doyle in midfield for only his second game for the club.

In the first leg, Rovers adopted a more defensive format, which did not work too badly, as the main objective was to quickly cut off the supply to Hitchin's pacy strikers. However, Rovers had to score at least one goal without reply and on this occasion getting round the visitors' well-organised defence was the higher priority.

There was little to differentiate between the sides for the first 15 minutes with both teams playing long balls up to their forwards. However on the 18 th minute, Hitchin won a free kick in a useful position just outside the box, this was taken by Aaron Cavill who got the ball to Josh Sozzo and he managed to tap in from close range.

Rovers then attempted to shift up a gear and they created a few reasonable chances with Matt Johnson, Neil Davis and Kevin Banner all doing enough to worry the Canaries' defence. During this spell, Hitchin as with the first match defended in numbers and relied on fast breaks to improve their advantage and it duly came two minutes before the interval when the home side failed to clear the ball, it fell to Gavin Jaggard, who fired home from 10 yards low into the corner.

After the break, Rovers continued to take the game to their opponents with a couple of good chances early on. Riad Erraji came on for John Snape who had failed to impose himself on the game as much as the first leg and Paul Moore replaced a tired looking Exodus Geohaghan who never looked 100% comfortable in attack and was on the end of a couple of curious refereeing decision, one of which cost him a yellow card.

After having played only one match for Rovers and that was two months ago, it was always likely that Daire Doyle would struggle to fit in quickly but he had a few useful touches and was just beginning to make an impression, when he was replaced by defender Phil Male. This allowed the hard-working Matt Johnson to move into midfield and the tactic appeared to work as Rovers managed to get one back with Paul Moore placing a low shot past 'keeper Richard Wilt after a good build up involving Riad Erraji and Neil Davis.

Rovers hardly surprisingly threw the remainder of their energy and effort into a vain attempt to rescue the match but for their troubles they failed to score again and picked up another couple of yellow cards for over-enthusiastic tackles by Erraji and Johnson.

So, a disappointing but not entirely unexpected result for Rovers who will probably admit that they had already gone about 4 rounds of this completion more than originally anticipated. The performance by both teams on the night was less than the first leg but Hitchin did enough to deserve the presentation of the somewhat appositely named Worcester Vase at the end of the game.

Rovers (3-5-2): Lee Evans, Joe Williams, Matt Johnson, John Snape (Riad Erraji 67 mins), Chris McHale, Mark Benbow, Wayne Dyer, Daire Doyle (Phil Male 75 mins), Neil Davis, Exodus Geohaghan (Paul Moore 67 mins), Kevin Banner
Subs not used: Luke Reynolds, Tim Clarke

Hitchin Town (4-4-2): Richard Wilmot, David Deeney, Mark Ducket, Stuart Hammonds,
Liam Folds, David Hicks (Stuart Lochhead 56 mins), Aaron Cavill, Glen Lamacroft,
Gavin Jaggard (Leegon Phelan 75 mins), Josh Sozzo, Daniel French (Wayne Mills 89 mins)
Subs not used: James Ayres, Thomas Hayes

Attendance: 544
Referee: Mr J J Linington (Newport, IoW)

Baker's MoM for Rovers: Matt Johnson