Bangor Men’s Football first took the Varsity match in Aberystwyth with a 2-0 victory over the home team. An early goal from Varsity debutant George Townsend created a fairly tense and passionate 40 minutes of football before Bangor doubled the lead.
Early on in the game we saw tackles flying in and passions soaring high as both teams wanted to notch up that all important win for their team in the overall standings as well as the bragging rights over their opponents. Whilst the Aber team had a few shocks on the team sheet, no one will be surprised that Bangor put out a strong team.
Bangor finally took the lead on the 29th minute when Townsend came from the left to chip the ball over the keeper. The pitch was then inundated with subs, players, and the crowd alike, celebrating what looked like the decisive moment of the game, despite it being slightly against the run of play.
After the goal, the game became fairly end-to-end. There were several occasions where both teams came close, notably Bangor who were through on goal a few times failing to bury the end result. One notable incident came from a corner where the Bangor forwards looked a sure to score only for the crowd to witness the ball go sailing over the bar.
With passions flying high, the match did see a major incident when a stray clearance saw the ball hurtle towards the crowd, hitting a bystander square in the face. Luckily, the spectator was, on the whole, uninjured. Apart from that, the end-to-end football was the highlight of the first half after the goal.
In the 70th minute, the match seemed to pick up its pace, continuing the end-to-end football and generated what looked like a Bangor win, after the ball was once again put past the Aber keeper. What followed was a frantic 20 minutes from Aber as they looked to try and draw back the deficit and net what could only be a consolation goal.
After the match, goalscorer George Townsend said “It’s my first Varsity, yeah, it was good to get a goal but it was a tense 70 before Chrissy scored to make it 2”. When speaking to the scorer, the Bangor support was evident as he was swamped by fans showing what it means to get one up over Aber.
