Match Preview: Weymouth v Yeovil – Monday 18th April 2022 – 13:00
It’s an Easter Monday special at the Bob Lucas Stadium with Derby Day, as bitter rivals Yeovil take on David Oldfield’s Terras in the Vanarama National League.
THE TERRAS
A disappointing day at York Road on Good Friday as Weymouth failed to build on a solid performance last weekend against Grimsby Town, as we fell to a 2-0 defeat to Maidenhead United. The result, as it stands, leaves Weymouth in 22nd place and 14 points adrift of 20th place Aldershot Town. But the Terras will fight right until the end, and it continues tomorrow afternoon against our rivals Yeovil Town at the Bob Lucas Stadium. A fixture we have played three times already this season, with two FA Cup matches plus the reverse fixture in the league which ended 1-1 at Huish Park. The game is bound to be exciting, and with a big crowd expected to descend on Radipole Lane tomorrow lunchtime, you don’t want to miss it!
David Oldfield spoke on tomorrow’s game following our match against Maidenhead:
“We have to make sure we are physically ready to compete. We need to lick our wounds, pick ourselves up and go again tomorrow as it’s a huge game for everybody involved and we are fully aware of that.”
LAST SIX
MAIDENHEAD UNITED 2-0 TERRAS
TERRAS 0-0 GRIMSBY TOWN
TORQUAY 3-0 TERRAS
WOKING 2-0 TERRAS
WEALDSTONE 3-2 TERRAS
ALTRINCHAM 5-0 TERRAS
Weymouth currently sit 22nd in the table with 23 points from 37 games
THE GLOVERS
Yeovil parted ways with manager Darren Sarll last month, who joined Woking as their first team manager. Charlie Lee takes charge of the Glovers in the meantime and since he took charge, Yeovil have failed to win in the three games played up until this point. Two 2-2 draws against Barnet and King’s Lynn Town and Friday’s 2-0 loss to Aldershot Town mean Yeovil seemingly have failed to get going under Lee and this can be something in which the Terras can take advantage of. However, Yeovil have a fairly good record away from home this season, as they sit 7th on away form with 7 wins, 6 draws and 6 losses from their 19 away games so far this season. There is no doubt Yeovil will want to break away from this poor run of form, and with a big following expected from our Somerset foes, they will see tomorrow as a strong possibility to get back to winning ways.
Player To Watch: Tom Knowles
With three goals in his previous five matches, Tom Knowles has scored seven league goals this season, which is the joint-highest of the current squad. In good form, Knowles may be relied upon to provide the goals that would secure Yeovil a first win of the Charlie Lee era.
LAST SIX
YEOVIL 0-2 ALDERSHOT TOWN
KING’S LYNN TOWN 2-2 YEOVIL
BARNET 2-2 YEOVIL
YEOVIL 2-0 SOUTHEND UNITED
YEOVIL 2-1 BROMLEY
DOVER ATHLETIC 0-2 YEOVIL
Yeovil currently sit 12th in the league with 50 points from 38 games
@TerraStatman’s Facts of the Match
Overall (against all Yeovil teams since 1891) – P253 W99 D48 L106. Home – P133 W64 D26 L43
We have faced our opponents more than any other club, averaging two games a season over our 130 year existence! (Poole Town and their various incarnations are 2nd with 228 matches). This season has obviously helped to push up that epic tally as tomorrow we face the team over the border for the fourth time in this campaign. This will be the first time since 1979-80 we will have had a quartet of fixtures when we met our fierce rivals twice in the league, an FA cup tie and a Western counties floodlit cup match. Incredibly the record is six meetings in a season in 1974-75 – 2x league, 2x Western Counties Floodlit League and 2x Western Counties Floodlit Cup!
We come into this final meeting of the season on the back of three 1-1 draws (if we discount a pesky penalty shootout!) but we have endured FIVE draws in a row against the club near Yetminster before now from 1949-1951! Back to this season and the Weymouth players to score against the green & whites in this campaign are Bearwish, McQuoid & Shields with one apiece. Charlie Wakefield, Matt Worthington & Adi Yussuf have all notched one each for the visitors.
Going back to the start, our first ever meeting against a “Yeovil FC” side was a 4-0 home win on 28th Nov 1891 when both teams had only been founded the year before. No one is sure if this team are the origins of the present day visitors but we were unbeaten against that club over 7 games and 4 years (W6 D1) before “Yeovil Casuals” were formed in 1895 which are conclusively linked to the A37 derby foes. When our rivalry began is anyone’s guess but there was certainly ill-feeling as far back as an abandoned game in 1893. That day Weymouth players left the field of play at their ground and refused to return to the field following a shot they thought had bisected the posts only for the referee to award a goal kick! (There were no goal nets at this time and such arguments were commonplace).
The first recorded match report comes from earlier that year and talked of a “remarkably fast” game and it “was in consequence of that that Yeovil were defeated” and “although they laboured energetically to retrieve a severe defeat their efforts were fruitless”.
One game against the Casuals in 1896 was a barnstorming 5-5 friendly, the first of only two occasions in over 6,000 games Weymouth have recorded such a score. Our battles continued almost unabated over the coming decades and this will be the 89th season we have faced the team in green and white, both sides always being a big draw for fans home and away. The average attendance at all these meetings is roughly 3,000 away and 2,600 at home. (Compare this to 1,400 home and away in games against all-comers.) In fact our highest ever recorded home attendance of 12,512 is against Yeovil, in an FA Cup game in 1948.
Between fans there has been much talk over the generations about which is the “bigger club” of the two but it is only in “recent” times that the hooped shirts have enjoyed a short, 31 year roller-coaster ride slightly higher up the footballing pyramid. Compare this to a MUCH longer 43 year tenure when Weymouth averaged a higher finishing position than their foes from 1948 to 1990, ending the season above them 23 times to 20.
Our last competitive win over the glovers was back in the Conference on Boxing Day 1988 in Somerset, an epic game that was 0-0 at the break before the home side scored two goals in three minutes just after the interval to take a 2-0 lead before Weymouth astonishingly came back to win 3-2, the winner in the 84th minute, Peter Conning stealing in unmarked to head home a Tony Pounder corner. Here’s hoping we can consign that particular stat to the annuals of history tomorrow and finally notch up win no.100!
The stellar list of those players who have turned out for both teams is….far too long to list as there are over 120 players! Here is a selection of some of the more notable names…
Len Bond, Mick Doherty, Lee Elam, Trevor Finnigan, Kirk Jackson, Andy Leitch, Jason Matthews, Roy O’Brien, Gerry Pearson, Tom Whelan.
Tickets are still available to purchase here! Don’t miss out!
