Oxford United Exiles 6 Raging Fever 5

Thanks to Rob Muskett for the (belated) report

It was a lovely sunny day that greeted the two teams. Stu Burson had come with his raincoat, clearly prepared for the worst, although it could have been to cover up his 'Prison Girls' T-shirt.

Fever were keen to build on their unbeaten start to the season, which had left them fourth in the IFA league, with John Matthews and Dan Pear leading the goalscoring charts. Fielding a very strong team, they raced into a three-goal lead, with a couple of quality strikes from Toby Pear and Theo Dominion.

The Exiles, clearly rattled by this, decided that the only answer was to bring a certain Gary Butler into the game. Amazingly, this gave them the boost they needed, helped by some fairly comical defending when Rob Muskett, clearing the ball off the line, managed to whack it straight into Nick Holloway's face and it bounced into the net. Fever's keeper, Danny Wells, was understandably upset about this, but he then made a rare mistake when he misjudged a cross-cum-shot, which sailed into the net.

Poor defending from Fever also followed, as a simple throw in with a flick on allowed an Exiles player to ghost in between four Fever defenders, who failed to react.

Somewhat shell-shocked by this, Fever came out for the second half, but never really got going again. They soon let another one in as the Exiles striker raced away to make it 4-3. Fever equalised again through a fine shot from the edge of the area by Toby Pear, but the Exiles soon scored again to make it 5-4. Fever's keeper then had to leave, and with Butler enjoying being on the winning team for a change, he refused to take over, as previously agreed. This meant that Dan Pear had to take over, and he somewhat steadied the ship at the back by sweeping up behind the defence, although he did concede a sixth goal on an Exiles break. Fever pushed on and they were awarded a controversial penalty, which Matthews converted. A flare-up then occurred as Muskett, attempting to get the ball out of the net, was somewhat surprised to see Butler show agility never previously demonstrated, by throwing himself onto the ball in the back of the net.

The game eventually restarted with no further incident and the Exiles were happy to gain revenge for their previous loss to Fever. Fever left disappointed, not helped by the woeful first half performance in the afternoon game.