A great reward for those of us who stayed to the end | Vital Football

A great reward for those of us who stayed to the end

runner_pie

Vital Reserves Team
What an end to a game that was! I thought that for the first 10 minutes we played some really good football and were clearly the better team. Then it became much scrappier not helped by a referee who seemed to think we had all turned up to watch him.

Exeter's first goal significantly changed things. They became much harder to break down and we resorted to mainly long balls which were largely ineffective.

The introduction of Ameobi, in particular, saw us causing more problems for their defence as he won header after header yet, while he was called into action a number if times, the visitors' keeper was never seriously stretched.

The sending off swung things back in our favour as we poured forwards and Duffy was unlucky to see a pile driver cannon back off the bar. It was all Notts but a misplaced pass saw Exeter break forward and seemingly put the game to bed. This was the cue for hundreds of Notts fans to start leaving but they were to miss a grandstand finish.

Duffy, for the second game running, displayed his aerial prowess in front of goal to give us hope. At this point, I guess there would have been about two of the additional 4 minutes left. The crowd roared the players on and when Grant found himself in a position to shoot in the area, he went for the far corner, but a defender slid in and deflected it into his own goal.

The reaction from the crowd almost took the roof off the stands! It felt like a victory and although Orient's late winner took the gloss off things slightly, this will be a massive confidence boost going into that huge game at Brisbane Road.