Bath win in Blue Square Premier Playoff Final

Bath City 2 - 1 Aldershot Town (Blue Square Premier Playoff Final)

Bath City won a hard fought battle against Aldershot Town on a fine spring afternoon at Wembley. A brace from Amadou Kouman helped Bath to victory.

Midfielder Amadou Kouman got Bath off to a flyer by scoring a placed shot on 6 minutes. Kouman doubled Bath's lead with a placed shot on 17 minutes.

Aldershot also saw their 22nd minute strike questionably chalked off. Striker Danny Hylton managed to grab the consolation for Aldershot in the 65th minute with a powerful close range effort.

Attendance: 38817

We managed to hold out for a 0-1 scoreline against Kettering to take the semi-final into extra time. With our squad riddled with injuries and spent from the FA Trophy, we hobbled around the pitch hoping for the coin toss of penalties. Goal chances are few and far between, so off to penalties we go! Letheren saves one and we make it through. Luckily there's a week to rest up before the finals.

Kouman comes out of the blocks firing and nails 2 into the back of the net. It feels like the AM pattern is running well, so we exploit the middle and hope for more. Many chances, but nothing else goes in for us. We look pretty comfortable at 1/2 time and seem to have their measure. Aldershot finally blast one through in the 2nd half, but we are still getting more solid chances than they are.

With 5 minutes to go we shut up shop and hope they don't strike it lucky. The game fizzles toward a 2-1 win to us. We're going up to Division 2, but memories of our FA Trophy defeat are still fresh in our minds. Seems like we got something out of this month, but not entirely what we were expecting. Hopefully the achievement will sink in more through the coming days.

May is going to be fantastic for the budget. The Kettering semi final leg at Twerton Park broke $75K, then 2 apppearances at wembley brought in another 500K to double our total gate receipts for the year. We now have a healthy cash position to help us buy up for the entry into the professional league.