CHIPPENHAM SUNDAY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION: Barber hits five as Semington win at last (From Wiltshire Times)

CHIPPENHAM SUNDAY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION: Barber hits five as Semington win at last

6:00pm Monday 8th October 2012 in Sport

SEMINGTON Rovers picked up their first win of the season in the S.K. Fruits Limited Chippenham Sunday League Premier Division after their 8-6 home success over a hungover Bug & Spider FC, who spent the night before celebrating manager Marcus Lovesey’s recent marriage.

With both sides floundering at the foot of the table, a win was important for each and with Bug & Spider taking the honours last term they were favourites to claim a third successive win over Allan Clarke’s side.

For long periods in the first half it looked as if the were on course to do just that.

A mistake from Mark Dolman gifted Semington their opener after just 25 seconds with Stuart Barber finding the top corner from 30 yards.

Goals from Steve Allison and Dave Herring put Bug & Spider 2-1 ahead only for Barber to level with a well-placed near post header. Bug & Spider went 4-2 in front thanks to goals from Nuerin Jones and Mark Dolman which went some way to atoning for his first minute error.

Semington clawed their way back into the game and 30 minutes, Barber tapped in his third of the morning after good work from Kelvin Lockwood and on the stroke of half time a Tom Lester own goal levelled things at 4-4.

Stuart Barber’s cool finish put Semington 5-4 up on 50 minutes but the teams continued to trade goals and a second from Jones tied thing at 5-5.

A fifth of the morning from Barber handed the advantage back to Semington on 60 minutes and five minutes later, Sam Malone’s great volley at the back post gave them some breathing space and when Lockwood’s flicked header from Matty Russell free kick made it 8-5 late in the game it should have been game over.

But Semington left themselves to see out final few nervy minutes when Jones scored his third for Bug & Spider in what was a crazy game of football.

FC Jager 6 Westbury Rangers 1

FC JAGER gave up home advantage and switched venue, to Meadow Lane, Westbury, after their home pitch at The Beeches was adjudged to have too much surface water on it to be playable.

Rangers may wish they hadn't bothered though, as they suffered a torrid morning, having two players sent off before eventually going down to a 6-1 defeat.

In a bizarre series of events prior to kick off, the referee was contemplating cancelling the game as Jager's orange shirts and Westbury's yellow shirts were indistinguishable to him.

Westbury were eventually able to obtain a change of shirts and the referee was belatedly able to get the game underway.

The game started reasonably evenly and looked set up for a decent game of football.

On 15 minutes, Jager opened the scoring with a fantastic long range strike from James Eatough.

But Westbury's heads didn't drop and 10 minutes later Derek "DJ" Wheeler equalised with a stunning strike of his own that bettered Eatough's earlier strike.

The striker cut inside, ran across the whole of the 18 yard box and unleashed an unstoppable strike that flew into the opposite top corner of Dave Butler's goal for 1-1.

It was shortly after this that the game took a turn for the worst. Westbury Rangers' Ben Mead was shown a straight red card for petulantly kicking out at a Jager player and things went from bad to worse for Rangers when Matt Mead was shown a second yellow card for a nudge in the back.

With only nine players, Rangers were always facing an uphill battle but all credit to them, they defended well for the remainder of the first half to keep the scores level.

The second half eventually saw Rangers tire as Jager's two man advantage took hold.

Second-half substitute Dan Moore scored a brace and Mike Hopkins, Nick Ridout and Lee Fielding scored one a piece to complete Jager's second half showing.

The scoreline may have been a lot larger had it not been for Westbury's keeper Andy Ladd, who made a string of fine saves to keep the score down.

The game would no doubt have been a lot closer and could have swung either way if it weren't for the dismissals and next week gives Westbury Rangers an opportunity to put it right when they face Jager in the reverse fixture, again at Meadow Lane.

MATCH OFF: Biddestone Social v FC Colerne.

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