Salisbury FC suffer late heartbreak in Winchester City draw

Salisbury took the lead early on when Josh Hedges scored a fantastic solo goal in the 7th minute - winning the ball just inside Winchester’s half, dribbling past four players and shooting on the edge of the box to wrong-foot the goalkeeper.

But the Whites could not hang on to the clean sheet despite Josh Gould’s heroic saves in goal throughout the second half. It was his mistake that allowed ex-Salisbury midfielder Tommy Wright to chip the ball into an empty net to equalise.

Regardless of the late drama, Salisbury remain unbeaten this season - they sit in 6th place in the Southern League Premier South and are yet to lose in six games.

With both teams also playing on Saturday, changes were made to the starting line-ups, with Winchester fielding a rotated side that left their captain, Jamie Barron, on the bench.

Salisbury only made two changes: James Harding and Charlie Gunson made way for Dan Fitchett and Theo Lewis.

The Whites made a fast start and caught Winchester off guard with the tempo of the game, and Aaron Simpson whipped in a cross in the 3rd minute that curled in the air and unintentionally forced a save from Winchester’s goalkeeper, Charlie Philpott.

Minutes later, Hedges won the ball with a strong tackle six yards inside the Winchester half, which allowed Salisbury to counter - he dribbled forward as the home side’s defence tried to regroup.

The 19-year-old then managed to manoeuvre past four players, shooting on the turn on the edge of the box and nestling the ball past the keeper’s left to give the Whites an extremely early lead.

Salisbury dominated the rest of the first half, but Winchester came close in the 24th minute with a corner - the ball fell to Conor Lynch after six-yard-box-chaos, and Salisbury keeper Gauld somehow managed to scoop the ball off of the line.

The 507 in attendance were loud as the second half started, and the travelling Salisbury fans made most of the noise.

But the game was changed in the 50th minute, when Hedges jumped up for a header and landed badly on his ankle, which forced him to be replaced by a returning Josh Sommerton after a lengthy break in play for treatment.

Salisbury switched to a defensive five, and despite Aaron Simpson coming close with a free kick a few minutes later, it was Winchester who took control of the fixture here on after.

Winchester’s Daniel Jones tested Gould twice in quick fashion - firing a header at the keeper in the 63rd minute that he dealt with easily, and also hammering towards goal from distance two minutes later, which forced a fantastic save from Gould, who managed to somehow parry the ball away.

Salisbury’s number one was called into action again ten minutes later, getting down low to palm away a Charlie Balmer shot that was destined to hit the bottom left corner.

A string of fouls, yellow cards and on-field treatment for Lewis gave the referee no choice but to add on a mammoth 11 minutes of stoppage time.

Winchester had all of the momentum in the dying embers of the game, relentlessly pushing a Salisbury side who had all 11 men behind the ball in their half.

It was eventually too much to deal with, as a miscommunication saw Gould run out to the edge of his box to make a tackle.

The resulting ball was not cleared, though, and with the keeper out of position, it left ex-Salisbury midfielder Wright - who had a loan spell with the Whites back in 2016 - in space to chip the ball into an open goal.

Next up for Salisbury is an FA Cup game on Saturday 2nd September. The Whites welcome Bridgwater Town to the Ray Mac for the first qualifying round; kick-off is at 3 pm.

Tickets are available via the club's website - https://salisburyfc.co.uk/tickets/

Feature Image: Andrew Palk