Keswick Men’s 1st team suffered a 4-2 home defeat to Alderley Edge despite making a flying start.
Good early pressure led to a goal after only four minutes courtesy of Rob Cook who made an angled run from the left side to the top of the D.
He then turned the ball back across the advancing keeper to score in the bottom left corner.
From there Keswick continued to apply pressure on the visitors’ goal, while their defence dealt fairly comfortably with Alderleys attacking threat.
The home side nearly doubled their lead on 16 minutes as a shot from Luke Heap seemed to be heading for the goal, only to go inches high over the bar.
It was nip and tuck from then until half time as both teams attacked and counter-attacked with some good passing and running.
Then right on half-time Alderley were awarded a penalty corner, and another straight afterwards from a Keswick defender’s foot.
Tom Briggs was able to take advantage to send the teams in level at half time, leaving Keswick to muse on whether they should have been ahead on the balance of play.
For the second home game in a row, the opening 10 minutes of the second half proved to be Keswick’s undoing.
As they pressed forward three minutes into the half, they were caught on the counter, and Sam Buckingham made it 2-1 to the visitors.
Worse was to follow two minutes later as Briggs popped up to slot home Alderley’s third goal.
There were only ten minutes of the half gone when Briggs was there to make it 4-1.
Keswick rallied and started pushing for more goals, but the Alderley defence held out until three minutes from time when Heap scored the home side’s second.
