Lyndhurst 3 Bournemouth Poppies 2

I had a deperate rush into the New Forest for this one, with confussion over the kick off, with one web-site saying 6:45 and another saying 7. When i parked in the small car park down the road i could see the game had started although thankfully i had only missed 3-4 minutes. This friendly was anything but, and became a quite heated affair at times. If both teams could play as well as they could argue with each other then they would surely finish the forthcoming season well.

Lyndhurst were by far the better team in the first half scoring three good goals on the counter attack. Despite the sun hindering the home defence, the Lyndhurst Goalkeeper pulled off a string of fine saves, including one from the penalty spot.

The Lyndhurst Goalkeeper saves the penalty low to his right.

Bournemouth (the higher ranked of the two teams) had their manager sent off in the first half for a tirade of foul language thrown at the referee.

The Away Dug-out with just before the manager (far left in red) was dismissed

In the second half Poppies created a few more chances and pulled one back to make the score 3-2. In the last few minutes of the game, it threatened to boil over as a Lyndhurst player threw himself into a tackle. Despite it being one of the worst tackles I have seen in a number of years he escaped with a yellow.

The ground is pretty basic (as most HPL one's are), with a fenced off pitch, no admission was charged or programme produced.

All in all an enjoyable evening and another HPL ground ticked.