Banbury opened up their 2010-11 Zamaretto League campaign with a game at newly-promoted Cirencester where they may have expected to get all three points, but at the end of the day, a single point turned out to be a fair result.

From the kick-off, both sides were a little over-cautious and defending was obviously the order of the day. Cirencester looked the better of the two teams during the first-half, and looked to be the stronger in mid-field, but with two speed-merchants up front, they cut out their own midfield with long balls forward. To be fair, United defended well throughout, and any chances were reduced to hopeful shots from distance, all of which were off-target.

Joe Murrell looked uncharacteristically nervous and fumbled the ball on a couple of occasions early on, but the Centurions were unable to capitalise. However, the home side took the lead in controversial circumstances in the 17th minute when a free-kick was awarded following a ball-to-hand incident as a result from a point-blank cross which struck the player, and when the ball was played into the danger area by Tom Etheridge, Rob Hoskins bundled the ball home.

Banbury tried to hit back immediately but Cirencester’s captain Chris Thompson was outstanding throughout and marshalled his defence well. Banbury’s main ploy was to fire long crosses on to the head of Jason Taylor, and whilst he competed well, he failed to get his head to as many as he would have liked, and the home side’s back line had little difficulty in protecting their ‘keeper Matt Bulman, who had little to do.

The second-half saw an improvement from United as they looked for an equaliser, but the outcome was basically the same as the first, with both defences on top, and neither ‘keeper having a shot to save. At the back, Delroy Gordon was magnificent, but Luke Cray was given a hard time on the left side of the defence. Banbury at last started to look stronger than their opponents after an hour, but it was still difficult to see where a goal was going to come from, and in fact they never managed to force a single corner for the whole match.

In the 90th minute, they got just rewards for their perseverance when a long throw from Joe Coleman from the right was headed on at the near post, and Rob Foster was quickest to react to poke the ball home for a share of the points.

Cirencester Town: Matt Bulman, Scott Mason, Matt Walsh, Chris Thompson, Sean Wood, Matt Sysum, Jamie Reid, Tom Etheridge (Nathan Davies 70), Marcus Palmer (Paul Banks 89), Carl Brown, Rob Hoskins (Jody Bevan 70). Subs (not used): Zak Westlake, Lyndon Tomkins.

Banbury United: Joe Murrell, Adam Howarth, Luke Cray, Nathan Haisley, Delroy Gordon, Ross Oulton (Marvin Martin 54), Joe Coleman, Declan Benjamin (Ollie Stanbridge 79), Scott Cross (Rob Foster 64), Jason Taylor, David Staff. Sub (not used): Adam Learoyd.

Attendance: 211