1st Team v Basingstoke Town

No. 55   Saturday 28th April 2018.     Southern League – Premier Division
Basingstoke Town   4 (McKnight 8,87,Bunting 44,Deadfield 81)  Kings Langley  3 (Johnson 52,Weiss 55,Turner 75)     
ROLLER COASTER RIDE AT JOURNEY'S END
The last game of the season saw Kings’ squad stretched to its limits and for the first time in six seasons, with no last day ‘everything to play for’ excitement. It would be fair to say that Langley have not had the rub of the green this season and when a shot from Jack McKnight took a looping deflection over Martin Bennett, it was a deja-vu moment from the previous week’s ill fortune. That the throw in that led directly to it was apparently wrongly awarded by the assistant referee hit the visitors even harder and Bennett was booked for his protestations. The Dragons went on to dominate the first half, with Kings looking as if they couldn’t wait for the season to end and the half finished with a complete misunderstanding between Martin Bennett and Jorell Johnson allowing Callum Bunting to slot the ball into an empty net from an acute angle. Steve Conroy’s half time talk must have been a good one, as a different team emerged and had pulled a goal back within seven minutes as a Kieran Turner corner was met at the far post by the head of Jorell Johnson, who had powered through the covering defence like a tidal wave. Three minutes later Mitchell Weiss received the ball wide left on the halfway line and started a run that left three defenders trailing in his wake before crashing a rising shot into the far corner for his twentieth goal of the season. As Basingstoke struggled to respond, a George Bennett free kick was turned round the post by his namesake, but a stunning comeback was completed when Weiss fed Kieran Turner on the same left wing and he emulated his provider’s previous run to hold off two defenders to lift the ball over Colm McAdden and in off the far post. It was an extraordinary turnaround that had stunned the home fans, but Town had looked dangerous all afternoon through Sam Smart roving down the right wing and although Josh Coldicott-Stevens, shunted to left back, had stuck manfully to his task, it was a Smart run and cross that found Sam Deadfield with space to level with ten minutes to go. Kings were disappointed to have been pegged back after such an effort, but in a cameo of the season as a whole, they were destined to go down to yet another battling, narrow defeat as McKnight’s second stole all three points with three minutes to go.    RM