Dandy Town 1

North Village 2

North Village Rams finally got a league win under their belts yesterday.

The victory at St John’s Field was the team’s first in the Premier Division since their 2-1 win over Flanagan’s Onions in September.

Goals from Rakeem DeShields and Jahzarde Samuels meanwhile were the first Village had scored in the league in more than 400 minutes of football, stretching back to their 2-2 draw with PHC on October 5.

“Finally, that’s a monkey of our back, definitely,” Ralph Bean Jr, the Village manager, said.

In truth Village could, and should, have scored enough goals to win several games, but they lack a striker with killer instinct or pace.

Fortunately, Hornets were generous enough in defence, and the two opprtunities Village did capitalise on came through opponent error rather than their own creativity.

DeShields opened the scoring with less than ten minutes gone, heading in from close range after a long ball from Tyrell Burgess, the defender, caught Town off guard. Samuels’s strike from inside the box, which put his side 2-0 up, came when he was allowed to drift away from his marker and Takeyhi Walker threaded a neat pass through the Town defence.

In between Walker missed a golden opportunity to get on the scoresheet, and after Angelo Simmons, the Town striker, had pulled one back with an hour gone, Samuels, Thomas Watson, and Dimitri Daniels all wasted excellent chances to seal the points for their side.

“It’s something that we are working on, and sometimes it seems like the ball won’t go in the net, and you have to just push until you break that ice,” Bean said. “We got the two goals, but quite easily we should have sealed the game earlier than we did.

“Confidence is utmost, it being a tough win, and a very slim margin, I think it’s even better for our confidence.”

As might be expected in a game between two teams in the bottom half of the table, there were chances at either end. However, Town were just as wasteful as their opponents, and while Troy Hall Jr, the Villager goalkeeper, made a couple of good saves, the home side struggled with the last pass for much of the afternoon.

Still, they might consider themselves a little unfortunate to have been denied a penalty in the closing stages, when there was a suspicion that Walker used his hand to clear the ball off the line as Town pressed hard for an equaliser.

Ultimately Town paid for a disorganised defensive effort and lack of rhythm going forward. Village were little better, but rode their luck, and the scrappy nature of the game was perfectly highlighted by the six yellow cards that Elijah Holmes, the referee, handed out.

He also sent off Trey Durham, the Village substitute, who was sitting on the bench when Holmes decided that a volley of abuse directed at him after one booking, had emanated from Durham’s direction.

The decision left both the player and his manager baffled, and created a little more tension while the visiting side held on for the six minutes of injury time that Holmes played.

There was still time for Town to miss one more chance, when Clay Darrell broke into the box and seemed certain to score, until a last-ditch tackle from Burgess sent the ball soaring out for a corner.

“It was a tough game. My hat goes off to Village, they did an excellent job today. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the equaliser, but the game happens like that,” Jomar Wilkinson, the Town manager, said.

“I think it was one of those days. We lost concentration with those diagonal balls into the box, they capitalised off it, but we have to learn from this and push on.”