Bolton 1 - Bowdon Killer Bees 2

Ah. Sunny Bolton. Or at least their all weather pitch on a cold (ish) and only slightly windy day.

The date. Saturday 16th march 2002 and the last game of the season

The opposition. Looking good with some amazing dribblers (not the beer).

The Killer bees. Ten keen men and not a natural goalkeeper among them.

The opposition as usual made the fatal mistake of giving us a player. His name was Zippy although judging by the way his normal team mates kept fouling him I thought he was actually called "hit me".

With some good end to end stuff the Bees were scenting honey and a victory and it was only a matter of time till we scored. Eventualy Rich Armishaw put the ball in the back of the net with a satisfying thud. The score remained this way until just before half time when Bolton equalised. Some of Bolton's players were very good with their ball skills but these never actually got them near to scoring with Dave Phillips and Rich doing a magnificent job in the middle and Jay Burns doing a fine job marshalling the defence of Jon Bray and the end of term guest appearance from Phil Fishwick.

It was near the start of the second half and the Bees were putting some sweet moves together; piling on the pressure and executing some text book moves. The sun had come out and shone warmly upon the town of Farnworth. (Whose doing this report The Doc or Stuart Hall?)

The Bees were awarded a short corner. The hit from the top of the "D" was going wide but up stepped the Captain to athetically, skillfully and wonderfully redirect this wild shot into the back of the net (although this was not quite the way Andy marshall described it). Anyway the net(!) result was that the Bees were now in the lead again.

Bolton piled on the pressure but the defence held. And then....

Fishwick P cynically and cold bloodedly upends one of Bolton's players with his stick in the "D" right in front of the Umpire. The Ump was I think so amazed that, forgetting to red card Phil, simply pointed to the spot.

Was this the end of the Bees fine gameplan? Were we to return home not having won? Step into the nets Mr Gary Campbell. Having (been) volenteered to play in goal Gary, with a certain amount of nonchalance, proceeded to glove the attempted flick stroke away. What made it even more remarkable was that the ball was heading for Gary's right hand corner but he used his LEFT glove to stop the goal being scored.

Now we awaited the final whistle and despite Bolton having a short corner to take with the whistle already having mistakenly been blown Bowdon returned the victors from a fine game with a score of 2:1

The Doc