Clanfield consolidated their position at the top of the Division One table with a 7-0 win against Bourton Rovers. Not since the 2013/14 campaign have Clanfield won a league match so convincingly when they won by the same score at Cheltenham Saracens and on home soil you have to go back to their 7-0 win against Malmesbury in 2010/11.
Before the match a minutes’s silence was observed in memory of Clanfield goalkeeper of the 1970’s Brian Sherratt. IN the 1973/74 season Brian played 1000 minutes in goal for Clanfiekd without conceding a goal and in that campaign Clanfield only conceded 17 league goals in 32 games. Brian who played 70 football league games (44 of them for Oxford United) suffered a badly broken leg in a league cup tie at Pinehurst and never played again,although the following season he was part of the Clanfield management team. Incidentally after the league cup tie at Pinehurst was abandoned Clanfield won the rearranged match 8-0.
Clanfield started the match brightly against a Bourton Rovers team that had only won two league games this season, but included Michael Duerden who was previously a prolific marksman with Clanfield. From a Jamie Wyatt free kick Josh Gibbens opened the scoring, although Wyatt who looked lively in the games’s early stages had to go off and was replaced by Jack Bellenger. However it was Bellenger who scored Clanfield’s second when the Bourton goalkeeper could only parry an effort from Zak Oliver and Bellenger was on hand to hrad home.
Clanfield then had several chances to extend their lead and Zak Oliver would have been disappointed not to find himself on the score sheet, although in fairness to Zak he was good at creating chances and was playing with a lot of energy.
For a short while Bourton enjoyed a reasonable amount of possession in the Clanfield half and you sensed that if they got a goal back before half time it could have been a differentg game. However a third Clanfield goal before the interval with Cam Pirie heading home effectively ended the game as a contest.
Clanfield scored a fourth early in the second half when a corner from Zak Oliver was played back in and Josh Gibbens headed home for his second of the game which led to the centre back and captain becoming very aware of the fact that he was only one goal away from a hat-trick. Declan Shepperd added a fifth before being substituted and replaced by Jozef Fullerton.
Fullerton who had earlier scored one of Clanfield’s two disallowed goals added a sixth and George Seacole completed the scoring. Bourton kept battling to the end and a cross/shot which hit the top of the cross bar was the nearest they came to scoring. Clanfield also had other chances to score in the second half.
Clanfield have no game on Saturday coming.
