FC Boro

After the disappointment of going out of the FA Cup against Port Vale in midweek, Stevenage bounced back with a good, solid win over Forest Green Rovers. Westley’s side began the game 5 points adrift of leaders Oxford United at the top of the Blue Square Premier table and with them beating Barrow at the Kassam Stadium, the 3 points were even more important as Boro try to keep at pace with Oxford in the run up to Christmas.

Stevenage made a few changes to their starting 11 with Mitchell Cole, Charlie Griffin, Jon Ashton and David Bridges all absent. Cole went onto the bench, while both Griffin and Bridges didn’t travel. In came Lee Boylan, who returned from injury, Darren Murphy, Joel Byrom and Chris Beardsley. Forest Green left new loanee Ben Joyce on the bench. Sean Rigg started his last game for the club before his loan deal expires.  The FA Cup hero from the last round against Mansfield, Conal Platt did start the game.

Boro went in front after just 7 minutes thanks to a clinical Lee Boylan finish. Chris Beardsley worked his way down the right flank before crossing for Boylan to head home. Boro have missed Boylan’s finishing ability while he’s been out injured. I think he would have made the difference had he played in any of the 2 games against Port Vale in the FA Cup. We were punished in that tie, due to not being clinical enough in front of goal. Unfortunately Charlie Griffin was guilty of many of them chances and while I think he’s been good against the weaker teams like Gateshead and Hayes & Yeading, he needs to take his chances in the ‘bigger’ games too.

Boro dominated the game for long spells and had chances to double their lead. Both Yemi Odubade and Chris Beardsley had efforts which missed the target. The home side did have a chance to equalise when Conal Platt’s free-kick came back off the post. Platt impressed again and is fastly becoming one of most feared attackers outside the football league. Boro went in at half time 1-0 up, but maybe should have been more in front.

Forest Green made two changes at the beginning of the second half as they tried to push for an equaliser. On came the experienced Paul Stonehouse and Oli Thorne. They hardly made a difference to FGR’s performance as Boro again dominated possession. It was the Hertfordshire side that had the first chance of the second half when Chris Beardsley’s header from a Drury free-kick hit the post. Ronnie Henry did the same minutes later when his long range effort hit the same post that Conal Platt had hit earlier with a free-kick. The conditions worsened late on and the game became more and more scrappy before the referee called an end to the procedings with Boro going home happy.

“You’ve got to win 1-0 sometimes, we had a good clean sheet and we looked menacing enough going forward to have won it more easily.” Westley on beating Forest Green

The conditions meant that it was never going to be a game where the football was of the highest quality, but in the end we won the game and got another vital 3 points away from home. As Westley said after the match, sometimes you need that toughness to win ‘ugly’. Boro didn’t really do that as they had a lot of opportunities to win by a more comfortable margin, but they were solid at the back and restricted the home side to minimal chances. More of the same will be needed next Saturday when they travel down to Salisbury, but up first is Chester City at home and we still have an unbeaten record in the league to keep going.