MAIDSTONE UNITED 1 FARNBOROUGH 2
This wasn’t awful, but it was a Men v Boys encounter and the men won. Maidstone did ok in patches, but only in patches and they were undone by a streetwise side who were more composed in front of goal and more assured at the back.
Five players who were here last year started, while the bench, encouragingly, was filled with academy prospects. And for maybe half an hour it looked like it was going to be a routine home win. They didn’t seem to have any idea how to contain Riley Court, who conjured a few Gascoigne-like runs that led to free-kicks and a series of corners.
The problem was no one could put the ball in the net and after a while it felt as if nothing had changed since last year, with balls getting hoofed downfield and going straight through to the keeper. Farnborough, who had a far more turbulent summer than we did, started to grow in confidence, hitting the post and then going ahead in stoppage time when Bloomfield headed in a right-wing cross.
That was enough to deflate the crowd, but what happened straight after the break drained all of the optimism that had built up during pre-season, as they opened us up and Reindorf stroked in the second.
The mystery of what happened to Dajon Golding after he was released by Maidstine was solved incidentally: he was an unused sub for Farnborough bench and might have been a decent option for us. Instead Nana Boateng came on for Alfie Tuck, lasting all of 16 minutes before he had to be replaced by Jayden Davis, after being clattered for the free-kick that saw us get a goal back.
Court floated the ball across, Hvid headed it down and Charles bundled it in to make it 2-1. With almost half an hour to go, Farnborough should have been made a lot more uncomfortable than they actually were, but after Hvid had a header clawed off the line, the keeper, Thomas, made a second block to deny Davis and you could hardly call what followed a siege.
Farnborough didn’t press for a third, but they didn’t really need to. There weren’t really any clear cut openings until Thomas comfortably dealt with a stoppage time free-kick from Court and with the corner that followed. It was flat and joyless.
“We showed spells of what we’re about,” said Craig Fagan, who also bemoaned a decision, presumably in the build-up to one of the goals. We’ll have to wait for the highlights to see if he had a case, but he did stress the players were still upbeat. “I said in the interview on Friday, the first game isn’t going to define us,” he said. Let’s hope it doesn’t.
