Evesham United staged a dramatic comeback from being 2-0 down at half-time to score three times in the second-half and beat Bridgwater Town 3-2 in Calor Southern League Division One South and West.

United looked to be heading to their fourth successive defeat after Tom Knighton scored two quick-fire goals to give the visitors from Somerset what looked to be a match-winning interval lead.

The Robins, however, who were down to the bare-bones through injuries and work commitments, had other ideas and turned the game on its head with a rousing second-half display to clinch their fifth league victory of the season on home soil.

With two debutants on show, Evesham were at sixes and sevens for most of the first period and the departure of young defender Dan Watkin with a broken nose did not help matters. The odds were stacked even further against Paul Collicutt’s side after Knighton had bagged two goals in four first-half minutes.

The first arrived when the Bridgwater striker netted with a simple tap-in on 24 minutes and, soon after, he tucked away Mitchell Page’s low cross to make it 2-0. Louie Barnfather, in the United goal, prevented the visitors from adding to their lead before the break, making important saves from Knighton and Karl Tooze.

Brown scored brace

Brown scored brace

The Evesham fightback began just five minutes after the restart when Carl Brown shot through a ruck of players from 20 yards to reduce the deficit. It got better just past the hour mark when Marcus Palmer’s looping header found the back of the net via an upright to tie the scores level at 2-2.

Evesham went on to dominate to the end and got their rewards with 12 minutes to go. Substitute Elliot Kennedy burst past two defenders down the left and crossed to Brown, who sent a superb header past Sam Alexander into the top corner of the net. Alexander denied Brown a deserved hat-trick late on but Evesham held firm during seven minutes of injury-time to claim a thrilling victory that looked most unlikely at half-time.

Attendance: 152.


0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.