It's All To Play For

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Brentford 1 - Exeter City 1

Brentford and Exeter drew 1-1 on Monday evening in the JPT Southern Final first leg.

Andy Scott was forced to make two changes to his starting eleven with the injured Charlie Macdonald and Karleigh Osborne replaced by Forster and Legge.

In a near repeat of Friday's league match, it was definitely a 'game of two halves' (if you excuse the hackneyed football cliche) as Exeter dominated before the break.

Cureton and Nardiello were a real handful for the Bees defence and it was no suprise when the visitors took the lead through former QPR man Cureton. The 35 year old had already been a thorn in Brentford's side before he latched on a lobbed pass to smash the ball past Richard Lee in the 39th minute.

Brentford again had Lee to thank for keeping the score down with a number of stops, whilst veteran hitman Nicky Forster was Brentford's only bright spark in another poor first half performance (Forster was later named Sky man of the match, chosen by former Bees boss Martin Allen).

Fortunately Andy Scott's team improved after the break and equalised on the hour mark when Myles Weston took advantage of a poor punch to centre for Gary Alexander to slip his markers and convert from close range.

Weston in particular started taking the game to Exeter and his battle with full back Duffy was compelling.

It looked like Myles had put the Bees in front from Forster's cross but his smart header hit the base of the post before Duffy smashed the ball against his own keeper only to see it roll away harmlessly.

Brentford then kept up some good pressure without working many clear cut chances until the referee blew the final whistle.

With the scores level at the half-way stage of this contest Brentford still have a decent chance of making it to Wembley - and were quite lucky that Exeter only left Griffin Park with one away goal.

It's slightly infuriating that this Bees team can't seem to put in a decent shift for an entire 90 minutes, but we are capable of putting some good football together at times on the rare occasions that we get the ball down and pass it.

Bees - Lee, Spillane, Legge, Balkestein, Woodman, Laird, Bean (Dave), Kev, Weston, Forster, Alexander

With thanks to beesotted for their match report

January 18, 2011