Stalemate at the top

HUNGERFORD will need ‘snookers’ to hang on to top spot in the Eco Stik League Southern’s Division One South and West - but for now they are still covering the top pocket after Saturday’s one-two deadlock at Bulpit Lane.
Everybody admitted it was the proverbial ‘game of two halves.’ Poole bossed the first and Hungerford the second, but there were few clear-cut chances for all the blood and thunder antics that went on over the park.
Football-wise it was no classic, but the game was always on the edge of producing something and it was to the credit of both defences that neither buckled.
Hungerford’s was under more threat more to do that in the opening 45 minutes as Poole thumped in a string of set piece balls that played to their strengths and style, although their best opening was made neatly and cleverly by Warren Byerley and Carl Preston before Luke Burbidge strayed to far and too high on Paul Strudley.
Otherwise headers flew off the mark and the threat subsided before the break, to return only during the fraught final moments. In between, Hungerford had the best of things. Harry Goodger tried to meet a Bradley Gray cross acrobatically, Hungerford’s set pieces met with the same determined defending they themselves had shown, and the mid-second half arrival of from three Mark Draycott, Ben Pugh and Alan O’Brien probably came 20 minutes late for the day, but a game too early for match-fitness.
So it w[caption id="attachment_66732" align="alignleft" width="345" caption="Dean Stow and Poole's Lamin Dibba compete on Saturday"][/caption]as as you were with Hungerford five points clear but with a lot of games to go, a bigger share of them for Poole.