Eversley & California 1, Farnham Town 1

DISAPPOINTED Farnham Town boss Luke Turkington has promised to make changes after watching his wasteful side squander the chance to move up to second place in the league on Tuesday night.

Having been outplayed by the impressive and all-conquering Jersey Bulls in the Channel Islands on Saturday, Town had the perfect chance to get back on track against rock-bottom Eversley and California at freezing Fox Lane.

But despite taking an early lead through Mark Corbett’s glancing header from Gavin Brainch’s cross from the left, Turkington’s men passed up a hatful of chances and were left to rue their profligacy in front of goal when Eversley snatched a dramatic equaliser three minutes from time.

And having seen his side concede late goals for the third time this season, after a 97th minute equaliser against British Airways and during a routine 3-1 home win over Ash – the boss admitted enough was enough.

“I told the players that they had an opportunity to extend the lead in the promotion spots and that they failed to do so against the team at the bottom of the league. With the greatest respect to Eversley, changes will be made,” said Turkington, whose side made it three games without a win having previously gone nine unbeaten.

“The difficulty I have is this, everybody has to be switched on. It’s all well and good saying the strikers can’t finish but the defenders have leaked another goal and every club that we are now playing always has an opportunity to get something out of the game and I have to stop that. We have to kill the game off and I have to stop the leakage of the goals, it’s as simple as that,” said Turkington.

“For the first time, I have been quite steely with my comments to the guys and now the reality is that changes will be made. There are no excuses, the boys have nowhere to hide.”

After a somewhat shaky opening quarter of an hour in which Eversley tried a fairly direct approach to get in behind Farnham, with a degree of success, the visitors seized control of the game.

Impressive midfielder Joe Sowden was the fulcrum around which every Town attack was built and seemed to cover every blade of grass at Fox Lane with seemingly neverending amounts of energy – and he deserved much more for his man-of-the-match performance, something that seemed long odds on when experienced former Alton Town striker Mark Corbett opened his account for the club on 15 minutes.

But an inexplicable amount of decent chances came and went, with the best of them falling to out-of-sorts strike duo Jack May and Charlie Oakley, both of whom were in fine touch not so long ago but have hit something of a drought in the past few games, while the big home goalkeeper had an outstanding night to miraculously get his sizeable frame in the way of anything on target.

And Farnham paid the price on 87 minutes when an otherwise nervy Eversley stole forward and grabbed a precious point – just 60 seconds after Town full back Tom Smith had heriocally hacked the ball off his own goal line.

Turkington said: “We need to be more clinical. We should have been out of sight but we weren’t and that’s worrying. It gives teams opportunities to get back into the game, and with three minutes to do they have done so. We are failing to shut up shop in the dying moments of the game. We have done that three times now this season and it’s just not good enough.

“The keeper had an outstanding game, he’s flying about and saving everything that’s being hit, but we’re hitting him and not the net and it’s just so disappointing from where we were in the first ten games.

“The first ten games I really felt comfortable that no matter what is thrown at us we have enough to win the game but in the last five games I have thought there is something wrong and I can’t put my finger on it.”

And he added: “We seem to be a fair weather team as this year has been a carbon copy of last year. We should have beaten Hayes and we should have beaten Eversley and we didn’t, and that’s worrying.

“We were nine unbeaten, now we’re three games without a win, I need to make changes. These players have to understand that their opportunity was last night and they have failed to deliver.”

Tomorrow, Farnham Town travel to face Chessington & Hook in Division One of the Combined Counties League (kick-off 3pm).