Hempnall FC

Hempnall welcomed Sprowston Reserves on a very sunny bank holiday Monday for a lunch time kick off.

Both teams were missing key players and it showed early on that it was affecting Hempnall the most, a mixture of players missing and some tired legs due to fixture backlogs.

Sprowston started quickly and very much on top, going close in the first few minutes. It didn’t take them long to take the lead through a nice bit of play and Hempnall not reacting quickly enough to clear the ball.

It didn’t take long for Sprowston to double their lead, when Hempnall again were caught short playing out from the back, stand in keeper Shingles passing straight to the Sprowston striker who finished neatly.

The third for Sprowston came a few minutes later through what can only be be described as a wonder goal. 

Hempnall tried to rally and had a few half chances down the left with Herbert and Huxtable, however nothing clear cut.

Sprowston were not finished in the first half and wrapped up a good performance with more sloppy defending from Hempnall, very poor first half from the clarets and something we haven’t seen much of this season.

HT 0-4

Second half started a lot brighter for Hempnall and although the task seemed almost impossible, should have come back into the game early on, but the usually reliable Lake blazed over from 3 yards out with just the GK to beat. 

More chances came and went for Hempnall with Womack heading over the bar and Marjoram shooting just wide. 

Hempnall were then awarded a penalty and this was a tame effort that was saved comfortably by the Sprowston goal keeper. It seemed at this point that it was written in the stars for this particular game. 

Despite Hempnall having large amounts of possession and most obvious chances in the second half, it seemed that the damage had been to difficult to overcome from the first half and Sprowston scored another two soft poor goals to round off an all round poor day at the office from the boys.

Sprowston were very deserved winners of the tie on this occasion. 

As for hempnall, a reality check today and hopefully a big bounce back to come from Wednesdays upcoming home game.

We opted for no man of the match performance as none of the lads deemed it was the correct thing to do based on the performance.