Mid Wiltshire Division

Both Veterans’ divisions of the Corsham Print Wiltshire Senior League are just two games short of the half-way mark in the season with that milestone set to be reached next week.

In the Mid Wiltshire Division, it looks like to be a battle between Melksham Town and Bradford Town for the league title with last season’s champions Corsham Town having possibly already lost too many games, although they just have the one game left against Melksham in terms of fixtures against the other top two sides. Melksham made it nine straight wins on Monday night with a couple of goals in each half in their 4-0 win over Chippenham Town Yard Dogs. An own goal and a first of the season from Adam Gingell put them 2-0 up at the break. Further goals in the second half from Wayne Wheeler and Gareth Evans, the former taking his total for the season to seven and the latter taking his tally to six, completed the 4-0 win. The win increased Melksham’s lead at the top of the table to eleven points and their lead over Bradford Town to 12 points, although Bradford Town have three games in hand and the two sides have yet to meet so far this season.

Reigning champions Corsham Town moved above Bradford Town on Monday night as a result of a hard fought 1-0 win over St Andrews. The only goal of the game came early on through Ross Williams with his first goal of the season. The two sides met three times last season and St Andrews failed to score in any of the games with Corsham scoring four twice and five in the other game. There was to be no repeat of that sort of score line in this season’s first encounter between the two sides, but St Andrews were unable to get that first goal against Corsham that would have given them a share of the spoils on the night. It was their best performance so far against Corsham, but they are still in search of that first goal.

There was just one more fixture that went ahead in the Mid Wiltshire Division and that saw FC Calne pick up their third win of the season with a comprehensive 9-0 win over bottom side Amesbury Junior Badgers. It was close at half time with just the two first half goals, but FC Calne stepped up their game second half and scored seven more unanswered goals for their biggest win of the season. Adam O’Keeffe led the way scoring four times to double his total for the season, Dan Slade fired a hat-trick, Gavin Wyllie added another with the final goal coming courtesy of an own goal.

Of the other sides not playing this week, Amesbury Junior remain in the title race but have a tough looking set of fixtures in the second half of the season with six of their remaining eleven games against fellow top five sides.

North Wiltshire Division

Monday night saw AFC Swindon return to action after a couple of postponements but they are still searching for their first points since joining the league. They did however equal their highest goal tally in a game matching the three goals they scored in a game against Royal Wootton Bassett Town in Season 2019-20. Unfortunately for them Swindon Old Boys scored eight goals of their own to run out 8-3 winners. Andrew King hit a hat-trick, Ryan Mason bagged a brace, there was one each for Andrew Fleming and James Roberts, with the final goal coming courtesy of an own goal. On target for AFC Swindon were Jason Ranford, Jason Cobb and Andrew Buss.

Just a single point separated Stratton Juniors and Cricklade Town ahead of their encounter at New College in what was the first time the two sides had played each other. Cricklade took the lead in the first half, Matt Richards heading in from a cross from the right-hand side. After the break Darren Cummins extended the lead firing in after an initial Stratton header had been saved by the Stratton Juniors keeper. Mike Sloan then made sure of the three points for Cricklade, hitting a free kick over the defensive wall and the Stratton keeper to make the final score 3-0 to Cricklade Town who moved up to fourth spot as a result of the win. Your Sport Swindon were covering the game and the highlights can be viewed by clicking on the link below or from the link on the Your Sport Swindon page of the website. Stratton Juniors v Cricklade Town link.

The final game of the week on Wednesday night saw South Cerney Rangers and Royal Wootton Bassett Town meet for the second time this season. The first encounter had seen the sides share seven goals with the Rangers edging it by the odd goal, but Royal Wootton Bassett Town avenged that earlier defeat to move level on points with second placed Redhouse. Goals from Martin Ohrland, Ben Gould, Daniel Badman and Andy Huggins secured a 4-1 win.

Unbeaten Redhouse remain favourites for the title at the half-way stage of the season, but the current league leaders are Priory Vale who have played two more games than Redhouse and have a three point lead. Royal Wootton Bassett Town remain in the mix and an improving Cricklade Town could also have a big say in the ultimate destination of the North Division title.

Having to travel to Devizes to play games remains an issue for teams in the North Division but the intention is to share this burden equally amongst all of the sides in the division. Unfortunately, despite seeking additional use of facilities in Swindon, regular slots at 3G facilities are currently not available. Comments made on social media this week imply some believe this is not necessarily the case. If teams know of a facility and can hire it for regular midweek use for their fixtures,  like the sides in the Mid Wiltshire Division have done, please do it and let us know, as it would greatly assist fixture scheduling and would help reduce the overall number of trips that have to be made to Devizes by all the North Division sides.  So far 18 sides from the North Division have travelled to Devizes for league fixtures with Royal Wootton Bassett Town (4) and Swindon Old Boys (3) having played the most games at Green Lane and AFC Swindon, Cricklade Town and Redhouse the least with just the one game each so far. The intention is that this will be equalled out over the remaining fixtures. The statistics on each sides’ trips to Devizes for league games so far is shown below and can also be seen in the results grid below:

Royal Wootton Bassett Town (4)

Swindon Old Boys (3)

Priory Vale (2)

South Cerney (2)

Stratton Juniors (2)

Swindon Rovers (2)

AFC Swindon (1)

Cricklade Town (1)

Redhouse (1)

The intention is that transparency around this issue will continue to be included in future round-ups.

Southern Expansion

2 December 2021