Pre season friendlies are a curious animal. The result certainly isn't important and the impact of the performance can only be felt in lessons learned for the future. They certainly are nothing more than an extended training session and supporters should rightly grumble if they are expected to pay full whack for the privilege of watching. Thus my attendance at such games tends to be confined to days like Saturday when I really have nothing better to do. Extra impetus was given by some rare seasonal sunny weather and so I found myself on a train out of Marylebone heading through metroland to Aylesbury.
In a little over an hour I reached the end of the line and what looked on first impression to be the end of the world at Aylesbury Vale Parkway. Leaving the station it became clear why it was there as a turn of the corner revealed a burgeoning housing estate in the middle of being built. The main road quickly took me to the Welcome to Aylesbury sign with the tell tale lure of floodlights on the edge of what will no longer be the edge of town.
Turning into Haywood Way, the main entrance to the ground came into view, the address revealing the club's origins as Haywood United, under which name they played Maidenhead United Reserves in local cup competitions. Following the departure to Leighton Buzzard of the town's main club Aylesbury United, today's opponents changed their name to Aylesbury Vale and then simply Aylesbury with attempts to merge the clubs coming to naught.
As United went on a slow and inevitable slide into county league football, Aylesbury travelled in the opposite direction and have now reached the lower reaches of the Southern League. The ground is functional ticking the admittedly few boxes of the Southern League ground grading but rather let down by my bete noire of a poor quality pitch which is not helped by the presence of moles and its location on a flood plain.
Managed by former Magpie Craig "The Tree" Faulconbridge, Aylesbury featured former United striker Brian Haule in their starting line up along with his non league veteran brother Davis. Maidenhead's line up was a curate's egg with some of last season's first choice players such as Billy Lumley, Bobby Behzadi, Leon Solomon, Leigh Henry, and Reece Tison-Lascaris, new signings David Pratt and Michael Pook, fringe players like Ashley Watson, Marcus Rose and Lee Barney, and an unknown trialist on the right wing who I believe was called Kamal.
Maidenhead started brightly, Pook showing someone of his trademark quality distribution whilst Pratt's aggressive running produced the opening chance of the game in the eighth minute. The summer signing drove into the right hand side of the penalty area and cut the ball back to Barney only to have the ball returned to him by a defender, Pratt's shot hitting the post. From this point on Aylesbury tended to have the better of things, taking advantage of a Maidenhead midfield lacking in bite, going into a deserved lead in the seventeenth minute when Brian Haule rose unchallenged to head a free kick home from close range. Rose almost matched this effort minutes later only for his header to be cleared off the line by an Aylesbury head.
Half time arrived and it was time to make a contribution to the Non League Chips blog by buying a freshly cooked crunchy portion which at a cost of a £1 was a welcome 40p cheaper than the advertised price.
The second half saw the inevitable onset of regular substitutions for both teams as each manager took the opportunity to give both established players and trialists some game time. For Maidenhead these included Daniel Brown, Mark Nisbet, youth team goalkeeper Michael Pearce, Devante McKain, Richard Pacquette, Anthony Thomas, Jonathan Hippolyte, Aryan Tajbakhsh and some unknown to me, one combative midfielder being billed as highly rated.
The influx of what amounted to a complete change of personnel did little to change the pattern of the game, Aylesbury missing an open goal on the hour mark before one of their trialists, the ungainly Geoff Mitchell doubling the lead with sixteen minutes left with a surprisingly clean strike from the left hand side of the penalty area.
As the match came to a close Maidenhead Reserve keeper Rhys Marshall, who spent the second half playing for Aylesbury, found himself in the thick of things, being rounded by Hippolyte only for the youngster's effort to hit the post, then watching a Thomas header hit the post and the aforementioned midfielder hitting the underside of the crossbar with a volley on the stroke of full time.
The final whistle left both managers with much to ponder, Faulconbridge's men receiving a welcome morale boosting win over lofty opposition after losing to tiny Chinnor the previous week.
