Charlie Benham finishes off a counter-attack with Brook Street’s opening goal this afternoon.
Seldom if ever has a match involving Brook Street Athletic finished in such bizarre circumstance as that against Winbat wonderers this afternoon.
Brook Street had been forced onto the back foot straight from the kick-off and suffered a significant setback when Raúl Colen was forced from the game with a rib injury after only twenty-five minutes.
The home side continued to press for the opener but Fermín Romero’s men held firm and got to the break with the game still tied at 0-0 thanks largely to the efforts of Jeremías Marchena.
The second half kicked-off in a similar manner to the first with all the play heading towards Brook Street’s goal and eight minutes after the re-start they survived a strong penalty claim when wonderers’ Festus Koech went down under a challenge from Jeremías Marchena. The referee however waved play-on.
Marchena played the ball out but a pass was intercepted in midfield and wonderers pressed forward again. Brook Street’s defence again held firm and when the ball broke to Alex Marker he had already spotted Charlie Benham in the clear ahead of him.
It was route one stuff, but the ball landed in front of the winger who raced through on the counter-attack and fired it low past the onrushing Robbie Archdeacon in the wonderers goal. It was Brook Street’s first attempt on goal and totally against the run of play, but the Monifieth side had their noses in front.
The question was, would them manage to stay in front for the remainder of the game?
The home side continued to pummel the Brook Street back line without any luck and as the clock ticked on they became more and more desperate.
With sixty-six minutes on the clock Garth Weakley crashed to the turf in the Brook Street box looking for the penalty, but despite being mobbed by Winbat players, the referee held firm in his view that Weakley had gone down far too easily and point-blank refused to give the spot-kick.
The wonderers’ player was perhaps a little fortunate that the man in the middle didn’t see fit to book him for simulation but instead a simple, “Get up son, you’re better than that” was deemed to be enough.
Play became scrappy as the clock ran down and it looked more and more as if Brook Street would see out the game with their lead intact.
However with a minute of regular time and another of stoppage time remaining the game turned completely.
Charlie Barr picked up the ball in midfield and raced forward. Kari Kienberger dropped back as the wonderers midfielder advanced and but when he went in for the challenge Barr back-heeled the ball to Garth Chalmers while continuing his run forward.
Kari went to close down Chalmers but this left Charlie Barr in acres of space and a deft pass had him played right through. Bearing down on goal he took a couple of touches before firing the ball under Jeremías Marchena to tie the game.
The crowd went wild and to be fair the goal on the basis of how many chances they had had was probably deserved. However fate had other ideas.
The ball had been played forward from the restart as Brook Street set about keeping it as far from their goal as possible. It found its way all the way back to Robbie Archdeacon who set up to clear upfield, but in a freak set of events he miskicked and the ball rebounded off Barry Glasser’s foot and bounced into the net.
The stadium fell silent in disbelief until the Brook Street fans realised the ball was in the net and as the final whistle went, their side had completed the perfect smash and grab win.
Speaking at full-time, even Fermín Romero was struggling to comprehend what he’d just witnessed.
“Normally I’d say I don’t care how we score, even if it bounces off someone’s backside, but in all my career I have never seen a goal like that”.
“Would I say that our win was undeserved? Absolutely! Does it bother me? Not in the slightest”.
He continued, “We’ve had plenty of our own kicks in the guts down the seasons so it was good to get a rub of the green for a change”.
“To be honest, when they got the equaliser with a minute to go i thought, ‘well that’s just typical, we’ve dropped two points in the final minute’, and with it we had to look more towards holding on for the point. Then”, he added, “that happened”.
Asked about Raúl Colen’s condition he replied, “It’s not great and he could be out for a few games. He may have bruised or even cracked a couple of ribs so we’ll just have to see how the scans look”.
“Alex [Marker] came in and played well at wing back despite it not being his best position. He linked up well and played the ball that Charlie Benham put us ahead from. He has come in under unfortunate circumstances and taken his chance to impress”.
He went on, “We now have strength in depth at the Club and this is a good example of it. We are building solid foundations and we can grind out results when needed. We are building a side fit to challenge for the title”.