Town in merciless mood.
Halesowen Town in their most devastating form, gave League leaders Bromsgrove Rovers a terrific thrashing in a brilliant display which bewildered the Rovers players and their large contingent of followers.
The final score of 7-0 did not exaggerate the Town's dominance; but for some heroic saves by Hooper, it could have been a small cricket score.
Halesowen : Collins; Hall, Field; Purvis, Culwick, Adams; Roberts, Russell, Timmington, Wood, Anderson.
Bromsgrove : Hooper; Innocent, Rees; Thomas, Wainwright, Bolton; Bent, Hackett, Finney, Goddard, Barber.
Referee : Mr. D. J. Thomas (Solihull)
It was a game Halesowen had to win to keep in the championship hunt, and how handsomely they did it. From the third minute when Anderson closed in to shoot low past Hooper, Rovers never had an earthly chance. They adopted the wrong tactics on a heavy surface, and Halesowen's quick and accurate moving of the ball into the open spaces time and again left the Rovers defence flat-footed. By the interval Halesowen were four up, besides which Timmington had hit an upright and Hooper had made some remarkable saves. This one-sided affair came as a surprise, for on paper it had looked like being a close and tense duel.
Furthermore Rovers had been unbeaten in 15 games. their run had to end sometime, but they can hardly have bargained for the merciless drubbing Halesowen meted out.
Timmington, taking a long ball down the middle, smashed in the second goal. Wood hit the third after an intricate dribble by Anderson along the bye-line, and Timmington scored the fourth from a Roberts cross.Roberts had his best game for some time, always making good use of the ball, and Anderson was a rare handful for the Rovers' defence. Naturally the pace tended to slacken off in the second half. Rovers whose most dangerous man was a former Halesowen player, Maurice Hackett, could not muster a counter-attack, and Town coasted to victory with goals by Adams, Timmington and Russell on the way. |