On what was a horrible pitch RTFC produced by far their worst performance in recent seasons to give their hosts a much needed morale boosting win and anchor RTFC into the bottom two of the league.
RTFC were missing 3 influential players for the trip to their north Hants rivals. Luke Gogan awaited the birth of his first child, James Finlay failed to recover from the injury sustained in the id-week cup win and Dan Godwin pulled out late after a motor-cross injury. As a result RTFC included a central midfield of Dave Sajic and switched Matt Greaves to right-back with Sean Leadbetter coming in at left back.
RTFC began the opening minutes the livelier with Chris Chilcott running the channels well and driving into the box from the right only to flash an early shot over the bar. However it wasn’t long before RTFC’s lack of bite in the middle of the park saw them back off an Alton attack. With the midfield failing to make a challenge, it needed a RTFC defender to close the oncoming attack down, however no-one took responsibility and the Alton striker hit his shot from the edge of the area into Lewis’ left-hand post where it deflected into the net. RTFC were soon 2 down following a third dangerous corner from Alton in a row. Lewis called and came for the ball but was unable to get anywhere near it and Alton’s defender headed the ball easily into the open net, leaving Lewis crashing to the ground with a head injury.
Taylor made immediate changes and Howes was replaced by Kerley as Ringwood went to a 3 man defence and 5 across the middle of the park in an attempt to gain some possession. However Alton continued to cause problems and RTFC seemed to have no answers. The tide was stemmed for 25 minutes as RTFC backed off the play and made it more difficult for Alton to break them open. At half-time the score remained 2-0 and RTFC had the opportunity to change things at half-time and make a difference in the second half.
RTFC did come out of the break the better side and had the better of the play for 10 minutes. A couple of half chances fell to Chilcott but the luck they needed avoided them and a break from Alton down the right led to a back post cross and the unmarked home player was able to pass the ball into the back of the goal.
The goal had a disastrous effect on the visitors and heads went down very quickly. Carroll came on for Bellott and within 5 minutes a cross was met by the substitute and it looked as though there was a glimmer of hope. However a fourth went in quickly for the home side and that initiated a collapse of shocking proportions. The defence looked all at sea and further mistakes by the midfield not tracking runners, defenders losing their men and goalkeeper failing to deal with crosses enabled Alton to stretch their lead to an unassailable 6 goals. In the final 10 minutes Alton were awarded a controversial penalty (making up for the stone-wall claim they had turned down minutes earlier) which made the score 8-1 and then a further goal was scored despite a goal line clearance from Hicks making it a gut-wrenching 9-1.
The visitors left with heads hung low.

RTFC: Lewis, Greaves, Leadbetter, Howes (Kerley 20, Hicks 85)), Brunnen, Wright, Sajic, Bellott (Carroll 70), Chilcott, Foster, Atkins

report from Jy Taylor