2013-14 UCL REVIEW

RESERVE DIVISION: COGENHOE RETAIN CROWN

With reserve team numbers continuing to fall for the 2013-14 campaign, all the remaining teams were brought into a single reserve section for the first time since 1983.

The change presented clubs with a much heavier programme of games, while the Reserve Supplementary Cup competition was consigned to the history books.

The format change proved popular with clubs, despite a mid season spell of bad weather which created a busy end of season period for all.

The season soon developed into a two horse race for the title, with Colin Cooper’s reigning Reserve Division One kings Cogenhoe going up against a new look Peterborough Northern Star side under the management of new boss Raff Mazzarella. Cogenhoe had kept their squad together and sent out an early warning to would be contenders, starting the season with an 8-0 demolition of Desborough and following up with a 7-3 win at Olney. The goals slowed after that, but the champions extended their winning run to six games before dropping their first points in a home draw with Oadby.

The Leicestershire club had won Reserve Division Two in their first season in the league, and the early weeks of the new season saw them emerge as challengers with a twelve match unbeaten start which yielded 32 points.

Star lost at home to Eynesbury early in September, but were otherwise unbeaten when they first crossed swords with the tabletopping Cooks on 19 th October. Goals from Joe Moore-Papworth and Josh Sanders gave Star a 2-1 victory, and Oadby’s unbeaten run had ended two days earlier when Stewarts & Lloyds won 2-1 at Freeways Park.

It didn’t take long for a three team contest to become two as the Poachers picked up a mere two points from a five match sequence without a win in October and November to slip out of contention.

Cogenhoe’s response to their defeat at Chestnut Avenue was a run of eleven straight wins through the winter months. Star more than matched that, despite a couple of cup runs which could have proved a distraction, extending their own victory sequence to seventeen games by the beginning of March. Cogenhoe’s home draw with Chenecks on 1 st March looked to have handed Star the momentum, but eight days in March proved decisive as the Peterborough side lost to Bugbrooke and drew with both Stewarts & Lloyds and Olney. Cogenhoe made no such mistakes as the season approached its finale and they wrapped up the title with a 2-1 home win over Star on 12 th April, goals from Callum Beech and Colin Cooper avenging the Cooks’ only reverse of the season.

The Cooks went on to create a new points record in reserve football of 105.

A distance behind the top two Eynesbury came through to take third place, aided by a six point deduction imposed on Oadby for fielding a suspended player.

Raunds finished at the foot of the division after two managerial changes in the first half of the season. A month’s break in mid season enabled them to regroup and complete their fixtures, seven points adrift of newcomers Long Buckby who themselves were ten points below Olney.

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