Today we travelled to Whitchurch, to face Shrewsbury Town ARC.  Table topping Tividale were full of confidence after an unbeaten start and a great win last week.Both teams started cagily but on 5 minutes it exploded into life after a Shrewsbury player unleashed a powerful swerving half volley from 20 yards out that dipped beyond the reach of Shane Willetts – a truly wonderful strike to give Shrewsbury the lead.

Tividale responded immediately and just a minute later they were level. A corner from Samuel Okoka was delivered to the back post where Joshua Marsden lost his marker to head home unchallenged.

Just one minute later it was 2-1 to Shreswsbury after some neat play down the right, a perfect through ball found the Shrewsbury striker who drilled his shot past Shane into the bottom corner.

Shell-shocked Tividale were soon 3-1 down when just two minutes later a Shrewsbury player pounced on a defensive error to finish coolly from a tight angle. After some instructions from the bench Tividale settled and started to play their football but the Shrewsbury defence weren’t giving much away. A minute before half time Josh went through on goal and his shot hit the side netting before he was taken out by a Shrewsbury defender for what looked like a stone wall penalty but it wasn’t given.

Tividale started the second half much better and a Harry beasley shot forced the keeper into a good save early on. On 31 minutes an Eddie Whatmore free kick was pushed out for a corner and Eddie was unlucky from the corner where his header went wide of the post.

Shane had to be on his toes on 35 minutes when he saved well to keep his side in it after some neat play from Shrewsbury.
Tividale were now on top and a good run and cross from Harry found Josh who vollyed wide. Tividale were running out of time and when Jack Mills headed just over on 48 minutes you sensed it just wasn’t going to be our day.

The last chance of the day fell to Alex Johnson on 55 minutes but his fierce drive was well saved by the impressive Shrewsbury keeper and the game fizzled out to give Tividale their first defeat of the season.