Exeter goalkeeper Lewis Ward is unable to save a free-kick from Colchester’s Cohen Bramall finding the net in the 81st minute of the League Two play-off semi-final first leg.
Photograph: Joe Toth/BPI/Shutterstock
Given the existential issues in which lower division clubs are currently bound it is hard to describe the return of play-off football as an overwhelmingly positive advert for the Football League’s health. For long periods of this first leg it was hard to muster enthusiasm for much more of this fast-forwarded promotion shootout, but then Cohen Bramall produced a late winner that took Colchester halfway to Wembley and reminded everyone watching exactly why it is so worthwhile.
Bramall is a dynamic left-back whose career path, which has brought him to East Anglia from Hednesford Town via Arsenal, has few equivalents. He had already come close with one set-piece, drawing a save from Lewis Ward in the 20th minute, when he was given the chance to size up another at an angle on the right side of the penalty area. It was not an obvious shooting position and Ward, realising his mistake after Bramall took aim, scrambled to his left. But the execution was too good and the goalkeeper too late; he could only parry inside his near post and leave John McGreal, the Colchester manager, effusive about his match-winner.
“We’ve seen it before, Cohen’s got some quality in that left foot,” he said. “It’s pure technique. We’ve said so many superlatives about him throughout the season. He’s new to the group but we class him as one of our own.”
Robbie Cowling, the Colchester chairman, had described taking his players off furlough and aiming for the stars as a “financial gamble”. Three of Colchester’s starting XI had already been told the club could not afford to renew their contracts beyond this month but the intensity of their performances spoke admirably of their commitment to the task at hand.
The fact that Bramall’s free-kicks, taken 61 minutes apart, were the game’s only two shots on target said something quite different. A virtually chance-free first half at least bore plenty of the skittishness these affairs often provoke.
Exeter, playing in the presence of 14 cut-out away “fans” who were positioned next to around 400 Colchester equivalents, only threatened when Nicky Law seized on a cut-back from the right and shot wide via a deflection. Colchester created little more but were brisker, helped by the insistence of Bramall and the right-back Ryan Jackson. One delivery from the latter brought a miscued header from Courtney Senior; if not always poised, McGreal’s team were quick and assertive.
The left-winger Senior cracked a decent effort over nine minutes after the restart. Matt Jay briefly thought he had scored a free-kick of his own for Exeter on the hour, brushing the side netting, but that proved as good as things got for Matt Taylor and his side. “The quality was not quite there but that is to be expected,” said Taylor, who at least knows Colchester must mirror their 250-mile journey for Monday’s second leg.
It was Colchester, achieving what is so difficult in this sterile an environment and gathering the kind of momentum a home side requires, who found that extra flourish. Bramall saw a shot charged down as the final 20 minutes drew in but, when the situation demanded some invention, he duly delivered.
In the day’s other semi-final, Cheltenham take a handy advantage into the second leg after a 2-0 win away Northampton. The home side had a fine opportunity to take the lead inside the opening 20 minutes but Ryan Watson’s penalty was saved by Owen Evans.
Ten minutes later Charlie Raglan headed home from a corner to give Cheltenham the lead and the visitors doubled their advantage late on, Conor Thomas sweeping home.
