Better Yate Than Never.

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Intro

It wasn’t so long ago that Yate Town looked destined for a battle to remain in the Southern League. However the arrival of Joe Guest and Nick McCootie from troubled Taunton Town has jump-started their season and the Bluebells find themselves having won their last 4 matches. In fact they haven’t lost since Boxing Day – a narrow 1-0 loss at fellow strugglers Paulton Rovers. The aforementioned victories came against Larkhall Athletic, Bemerton Heath Harlequins, Mousehole, and – most recently – bottom side Exmouth Town.

Tavistock make another trip north after visiting Bishops Cleeve on Saturday, and coming away with 3 points after a 4-3 win in Gloucestershire. The Lambs are a couple of places below their hosts today, albeit with a few games in hand. Other recent results have been rather varied – a disappointing 2-0 home loss to Exmouth was swiftly followed by a 6-2 romp over league leaders Frome Town.

Yate will be confident of continuing their winning streak, but if the right Tavistock show up it could be a close encounter.

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The Ground

The Bluebells have played at Lodge Road since the mid-1980s. It lies to the West of the town and has a good sized car park. It is also a short distance from the town’s train station. Lodge Road boasts 2 separate seated stands on the near side touchline. Also on this edge are the changing facilities and most of the other amenities including a very decent food outlet. Behind one goal is a good sized covered standing area, while behind the other goal is another outlet selling snacks and merchandise. The touchline opposite the dugouts is lined by a row of tall trees which makes the ground feel more enclosed.

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The Match

From the off Yate looked to cause their visitors problems and were playing some very direct football. The dominant Bluebells took the lead after a quarter of an hour via Oli Jenkins who found the bottom corner after a good run through the Tavvy defence. The hosts were all over their opponents; exploiting the wings as well as the middle with former Bath City striker Nick McCootie having a couple of good chances before finding the back of the net in the 23rd minute. That was his 5th goal in 5 games since joining from Taunton Town. With a few minutes remaining of the half Yate made it 3-0. A shot from James Taylor rebounded off the unfortunate Taylor Scarff and into the net. The away side had failed to test Aaron Sainsbury in the Yate goal and really needed to get a foothold in the game.

The first chance of the 2nd half did fall to Tavistock as a vicious shot from distance flew just wide of the Yate goal. Just as things were looking up for the visitors Yate struck again through McCootie. Getting the better of 2 Tavvy defenders the striker had his initial shot saved by Aaron Dearing, before squeezing the rebound in from a tight angle. Lively winger Callum English-Brown made it 5-0 just 5 minutes later – dribbling through the Tavistock backline, English-Brown curled home a brilliant shot from the edge of the area. English-Brown’s fellow winger Dylan Lewis almost replicated the former’s wonder-strike a few minutes later, but was denied by the post. Yate had the game in the bag and made a number of substitutions to rest some tired legs. They rarely looked in danger and it took another excellent long range shot from Tavistock’s Alex Battle to finally give the Devon side something to cheer about.

It was too little too late as Yate secured their 5th victory on the bounce and close in on the play-off positions.

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The Photos

The full gallery of match photos is also available HERE