Changes galore for the Glovers, for the visit of Rochdale.
As ever, we take formations with a pinch of salt, but Tahvon Campbell comes in to lead the line with Troy Perrett and James Daly also getting a go from the start. Finn Cousin-Dawson drops into the back line in place of the suspended Kyle Ferguson.
Declan Skura is on the bench and could make his debut, there’s no place in the squad for Ryan Jones or Josh Tobin.
Foot in the opposition camp, more like one foot in the EFL!
Rochdale are flying high and flying into Huish Park – how will the Glovers stop them? Can the Glovers stop them? Who better to ask than a Dale fan who knows just about everything there is to know about Dale, Mark from RochdaleAFC.com
Yeovil Town have announced the loan signing of Wycombe defender Declan Skura.
Skura is a former Chelsea youth player who joins for the rest of the season on loan from Wycombe, where he’s made a handful of appearances, mostly in the EFL Trophy and League Cup.
He spent time on loan with Ebbsfleet in the 2023/24 season.
Welcome to Somerset, Declan!
Yeovil Town will play their first game at Huish Park in over a month when they host table topping Rochdale on Saturday afternoon.
The Glovers suffered a loss last time out, when they were beaten 3-2 away to Boreham Wood. In what was a tight affair on Wednesday night Yeovil took the lead 1-0 through Jake Wannell before the hosts pulled one back through Zak Brunt.
As the half time break came and went the game ebbed and flowed until Brunt popped up for his brace. At 2-1 down the Glovers then went down to 10 men as defender Kyle Ferguson saw red. James Daly scored a sensational goal however to bring the visitors back to 2-2. The game looked headed for a draw until The Wood bagged a 90+2 winner through Aaron Henry.
The result was the Glovers second loss in five games.
The Dale haven’t lost in their last five games, in fact they don’t really lose at all, with only four league defeats all season. The last five games have all been wins as well, with the 4-1 dismantling of Boreham Wood perhaps the most impressive.
In their last game against Forest Green Rovers, the Mancunian side got off to a flying start with Emmanuel Dieseruvwe getting the opener within two minutes. The game then got a bit stagnated until Rovers pulled one back through their own goalscoring machine Kyle McAllister. Not content with just the one goal Dieseruvwe got his brace in the 64th minute to seal the win for his side.
The 26-year-old has had some decent league form since the turn of the year, with two goals and an assist in the four games we have played. That’s a good return no matter which way you spin it. Although it has been a slow start to his career at Huish Park, Daly hasn’t had a good run in the starting 11 to kickstart his season.
It does feel though that the penny may have dropped with the winger though, after a promising rise through the ranks he got lost bit at Harrogate, and Yeovil’s capture was seen as a bit of coup. Hopefully his sublime long range finish against Boreham Wood will give the winger confidence to push on.
Rochdale could have host of players that could be considered their ‘key player’, that’s what happens when you have been as good as they have been. But Dieseruvwe is the name that sticks out, mainly because he is the one who grabs the headlines with his goals. Speaking of his goals he has bagged 16 of them in the league, which is no mean feat.
Another aspect to the 30-year-olds game is his physicality, at 6ft 4in he is tough for defenders to get around to get to the ball. With no Kyle Ferguson the Glovers defenders will need to stick their biggest and strongest defender to combat him.
Jimmy McNulty is in the away dugout this weekend. The 40-year-old has been a revelation this season and although his side have one of the biggest budgets in the league, you still have to deliver the results. With four defeats all season, he is definitely delivering them.
This is McNulty’s first job in management and has been manager at Rochdale, in a full-time capacity, since 2023. In three games against Yeovil, McNulty is unbeaten.
It was a tough watch from a Yeovil perspective the last time the clubs met in October, as they lost 3-0 at the Crown Oil Arena. Two goals from Emmanuel Dieseruvwe got the Dale off to a great start before Ryan East got the third before half-time. When Rochdale last visited Huish Park back in August 2024 it was a closer game, with it being 0-0 until the 91st minute when Connor McBride nicked a winner.
Dan Moss will be a familiar name to Glovers fans. The right-back spent the first half of the 2021/22 season at Huish Park, making 23 appearances during his five-month loan spell.
Niall Smith is the man in charge for this fixture. For more information on him and his team for Wednesday night check out Ben’s article – here.
We’ve just about got our heads around everything that happened on Wednesday evening against Boreham Wood, Ed Turnbull is back with Ben and Dave to make head or tail of it all.
We have league leaders Rochdale in town this week, we chat about how much fun that might be!
For the first time since NOVEMBER, Yeovil Town have a home, league 3pm kick off on a Saturday… it just so happens to be the league leaders Rochdale who come to town.
Our match official for the game is Mr Niall Smith, a referee we’ve already seen this season, in the 3-0 home defeat to Boreham Wood.
On that day, Luke McCormick was the only Glover to see yellow, in the dying minutes.
We also saw him in the 2-1 defeat to Aldershot (away) last season and a 1-0 away win at Taunton in the National League South.
The only two times he’s ever reffed a Rochdale game, they were both draws.
Overall this season, he’s been in the middle 17 times, with plenty of experience in the Premier League 2 division for top sides’ U21s – those 17 games have produced 67 yellow cards (avg 3.9 per game) four reds and seven penalties.
Bailey Walker and James Hooper are his assistants with Lewis B. Smith in the dugouts.
Yeovil Town FC (First Team) v Rochdale AFC (First Team)
National League – Premier
Referee: Smith, Niall
Assistant Referee: Walker, Bailey
Assistant Referee: Hooper, James
Fourth Official: Smith, Lewis B.
We were up, we were down, we were level, we had it taken away at the end – life is a Rowley-coaster! Heartbreak and frustration, pride and disappointment, just a regular Wednesday night in the life of a Yeovil Town fan.
Ed Turnbull was in the away end with 124 other hardy Glovers, here are his Five Conclusions from the defeat to Boreham Wood.
The first hour showed we’ve got a long way to go
I know we went in at the break level, but that was a complete steal. I really enjoyed the way we used the ball at Telford and Altrincham, but in the first half against a stronger opposition we didn’t have any of the ball to use. And when we did get it our quality on the ball wasn’t good enough as we were suffocated by the Boreham Wood press. Right from the first whistle it felt like we were in for a long evening of bus-parking under the cosh, a still all-too-familiar feeling from 2025.
But the last half hour showed how far we’ve come
A goal and a man down away at a top 6 team in a game we’ve been on the back foot thus far, I think even the optimists amongst the hardy travelling contingent were struggling to see a way back into the game. But Billy Rowley did, it seemed. He decided attack was the best form of defence, and so it very nearly proved to be. This was epitomised by James Daly, who scored an excellent goal and very nearly topped it with a goal that would’ve induced comparisons to Gareth Bale’s against Barcelona in the Copa del Rey, albeit from the other side of the pitch (someone out there knows what I’m on about, right?!). It was very refreshing (and long overdue) to see a Yeovil side come out of their shells when up against it, rather than curling up into a ball of damage limitation with minimal success as we’ve become all too accustomed to.
We shot ourselves in the foot
The first 2 goals felt preventable, as did the red card (although I’m not sure I should complain about that, because it seemed to make us better!) – frustrating mistakes, made all the more annoying by the fact they ultimately undid all the aforementioned positives. I’ve generally been a fan of Kyle Ferguson, and still am, but I make that 3 key mistakes he’s made this season which have directly led to goals conceded (after Scunthorpe and Brackley away). Unfortunately for him, they’ve all come in games where we’ve lost by 1 goal.
Credit to Boreham Wood though
Yeovil made mistakes, but Boreham Wood were clinical enough to punish them. And then I have to (through gritted teeth) accept Aaron Henry’s free-kick was worthy of winning the game, especially one where Boreham Wood deserved to win on the balance of chances, territory, possession and probably just about every other metric. How Abdul Abdulmalik isn’t playing in a higher league I am now even more perplexed than I was after the reverse fixture back in October. Mind you, I’m equally perplexed by how the atmosphere at a club pushing for promotion to the EFL can be so non-existent!
We can hold our heads high after that
Maybe it says something about the home support too (sorry, I’ll stop with the needless digs now), but the fact the team that had just conceded a stoppage time winner was the team whose fans clapped them for longer after the full time whistle was a telling reflection of the pride I and many Yeovil fans felt after witnessing that display once we went down to ten. That said, football’s about picking up points not being proud of how you lose. It’s not going to get easier when we welcome table-topping Rochdale 65-and-a-bit hours after the end of this match, and I worry how our smallish squad will cope with the upcoming onslaught of fixtures, but at least I feel we’ve got a team that can give us plenty of excitement (and more importantly enough points to steer clear of danger) along the Rowleycoaster that the next 3 months will be.
Yeovil manager Billy Rowley has said he is pleased with the squad for ‘rolling their sleeves’ up in the second half against Boreham Wood.
In a topsy turvy game, the Glovers were ahead, behind, level before having a point snatched away at the end and the manager has told BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins, he was full of respect for the way his side turned up a gear in the second half.
“Yeah, I’m… you know, I feel sick for the lads really in there. Look, first half, it was men against boys. We were not good enough with the ball, we were not brave enough, we weren’t playing with enough courage to actually imprint any kind of shape oor structure on the game.
Boreham Wood were miles better than us in the first half and.it was just a personality thing really. It was just a bit more courage needed and I felt like the boys came out and… and showed more glimpses of that. We then obviously go down to ten men. [It] probably is a red card, two yellows.
Made it really difficult for us but that probably brought the lads even closer together and I felt like some of them rolled their sleeves up a little bit higher and grew a foot taller and I respect that massively.
Boreham Wood are doing a, you know, and Luke [Garrard – manager] are doing a great job here, but, we’re Yeovil Football Club and we’ve got to play with more personality and more courage at times and I only really saw that when we went down to ten men.
So that’s going to be the ask for the next, you know, 17 games or so. We want to show a level of determination and aggression to play for the badge and play for their teammates and I felt like we did that and obviously, you know, [Aaron] Henry’s put in… I’m going to say maybe the best free kick I’ve seen in the last few years or five or ten years into the top corner. Jed can’t even get a hand to it and that shows how good that free kick was. So, look, in extra time to lose to that, it’s really tough to take but we’ll move on from it.”
Rowley had a mention for goal scorer and captain Jake Wannell
”[Jake Wannell’s goal]was against the run of play. It was. I thought Jake was excellent tonight, you know, a massive captain’s performance. I thought he was one of the lads that did play with a lot of personality even in the first half. I’m really pleased for him. Obviously, he’s not going to be happy about this [result] one bit so that is what it is.
But, we scored against the run of play. but that’s sometimes what you do when you come away from home against a team that’s in the playoffs. You have to sometimes understand that you are the underdog from a from a stylistic perspective and we approached the game kind of that way.
I felt like we pressed well in our shape and that was the game plan. But, Boreham Wood have got some really, really good players and in tight spaces and in situations where you think you’ve won the ball, suddenly you haven’t because they’re just that good to get out of it.
It was a tough game tonight, really tough. And I’ll be watching this back with a magnifying glass to try and improve and keep getting better.”
The gaffer also gave us all a little reminder that our heroes in Green and White (or red and black) are still humans, who are giving their all for the cause.
“I say this to the lads inside a lot. It’s so easy for us as pundits, managers, coaches, fans, to sit from the side and say we should be doing this, should be doing that.
You know, they’re human beings out on the pitch. They’re dealing with a lot of emotion, a lot of performance anxiety. Sometimes ref decisions go against you. There’s a lot of things that influence how you play the game and I’m going to keep saying it, we need to find a way to play with more courage and personality because, you know, it is essentially just a game of football.
And there’s only three points on the line. So you might as well play with loads of courage and personality because the worst that’s going to happen is you’re going to lose anyway.
So we’ve got to tap into that. It’s so much easier to say from the sideline. You know, the elements, the pitch was quick today, you know, it was a different environment to play in.
I felt like, I’m not going to say the ref had a bad game but it definitely felt like, you know, you were playing at the Etihad or Old Trafford tonight in terms of some of the small decisions going against you. So no excuses about that though. We got beat by the better team tonight but we’re just going to have to keep improving and keep growing.
Yeovil Town captain Jake Wannell has said that his side produced a performance of two halves against Boreham Wood, rallying late despite being down to ten men to nearly, come away with a point.
Speaking to BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins, he said the team didn’t show enough courage in first 45 minutes.
“Obviously, the feeling in the dressing room is disappointed. Two sloppy goals that we’ll have to look back on, but ultimately that’s cost us the three points or at least a point away from home.
I thought, it’s hard though because we conceded three goals, so it’s hard to look back at it and think you played well. But I think it was a game of two halves for us personally. I thought the first half we didn’t show enough courage, didn’t get on the ball enough like we planned to. Second half was much better, showed a lot of character and I was proud of the boys’ second half. I think they’ll even mention it that we come out a different team in the second half. We’ll look at the positives from the second half and try and take it into Saturday.”
Wannell opened the scoring for the Glovers with his first league goal of the season, but his defence took a blow when Kyle Ferguson was sent off for a second bookable offence in the second half;
“I can’t really remember [the goal]. I think it was just a little duel at the back post and then, but yeah, that one’s for my dad who I lost at the beginning of this season, so I hope he’s proud for that one.
I can’t remember [Ferguson’s] first [yellow card], but I think the second one wassoft, yeah. It’s at a crucial time in the game as well, which put us on the back foot, but I thought the boys galvanized themselves pretty well and we actually kicked on and I thought we could have probably nicked a point or maybe even three with JD’s effort at the end, but I think ultimately they were the stronger team over the 90 minutes.”
“We’ve played them twice now home and away and I think they’re a strong outfit. They’ve got some great patterns that are hard to deal with, so credit to them and we’ll have a day off tomorrow and then review it on Thursday and then Rochdale at home on Saturday.
Apart from the first half, that’s not a Yeovil performance. So, like I said in the press last week, I think Billy’s style and Daz’s style is starting to really come through now and I think the players are flourishing. It’s just more time.”
Ten-man Yeovil suffered a sickening 3-2 defeat to Boreham Wood, with a 92nd-minute goal for the hosts proving decisive.
Jake Wannell had given us the lead – albeit against the run of play – but the advantage was cancelled out by two Zak Brunt goals either side of the break.
Kyle Ferguson was given a second yellow on the hour mark, but substitute James Daly’s beauty looked to have earned the Glovers an unlikely point. That was until Aaron Henry stepped up at the death to steal the win with a fantastic free-kick.
Billy Rowley made four changes from the weekend’s win over Altrincham, with Luke McCormick flanked by Terrell Works and Ryan Jones at the top of the pitch. Finn Cousin-Dawson came in for Josh Tobin in midfield.
The Wood started strongly, and the first of many attacks came inside the opening two minutes. A long throw into the box was recycled and Marley Marshall-Miranda’s shot had to be headed behind by Brett McGavin.
Moments later, Abdul Abdulmalik was left free and when Jed Ward pulled off the save, only the woodwork denied Lewis Richardson from tapping home.
The dampened Yeovil fans on the away terrace could have been forgiven for thinking a long night was in store, but when Rowley’s side finally got forward just before the half-hour mark, they made it count.
McGavin did well to keep hold of the ball in and linked up with Terrell Works, who worked the shooting opportunity and saw his low strike deflected behind. From the resulting corner, the hosts failed to clear and Wannell took advantage with a fine finish.
However, the lead lasted just five minutes. Jed Ward managed to get a hand to Matt Rush’s attempted Peter Dinklage, but with every red and black shirt seemingly in a different postcode aside from Wannell on the goalline, Brunt managed to tap home the rebound anyway.
Ward was tested twice more before the break, first when Abdulmalik pounced on a loose pass and fired across goal. Our number one then had to be alert when a clever free-kick slipped Rush through.
In truth, Ferguson’s second half was one the defender will want to forget. When he wiped out a Wood player and received his first caution, there was an air of inevitability about the second one soon following.
He did indeed receive his marching orders for a foul on Rush, but not before our back line was robbed again, and Brunt swept home to bag his brace.
Strangely, falling behind in terms of scoreline and number of players actually seemed to awaken Yeovil. When Daly, fresh from the bench, got on the ball, he ran and ran until the shot was on for him, and he dispatched a beauty of a finish in off the far post.
There were even signs that there was more in the game for the Glovers. Wannell’s volley from the edge of the box wasn’t too far off target, and when Daly ran the length of the pitch, skinned his man and touched past goalkeeper Nathan Ashmore, the ball trickled agonisingly wide.
In the final ten minutes, Ashmore – who I think has been Boreham Wood’s goalkeeper since their inception in 1948 – was called into action. Tahvon Campbell’s excellent hold-up play set up Troy Perrett to test the shot-stopper, with Ashmore getting down well to smother the low effort.
Despite the promising signs, when the hosts were awarded a foul right on the edge of the box in added time, there was an almost immediate sinking feeling amongst the travelling support. To be fair, Henry’s free-kick was as well-struck as they come, leaving Ward no chance.
There was no shame in the loss, especially in the circumstances, but that doesn’t make the result feel like any less of a gut punch.
Venue: Meadowbank
Date: Wednesday 11th February, 7:45pm
Competition: Enterprise National League
Scorers: Jake Wannell (0-1, ’27), Zak Brunt (1-1 ’32), Zak Brunt (2-1 ’52), James Daly (2-2 ’71), Aaron Henry (3-2 ’92)
Pitch: “Like running on ice” according to Billy Rowley pre-match
Conditions: Damp
Attendance: 923(!), [125 Yeovil fans]
Bookings:
Yeovil Town: Jake Wannell ’45, Kyle Ferguson ’49
Boreham Wood: None
Bookings:
Yeovil Town: Kyle Ferguson ’64 (Second bookable offence)
Boreham Wood: None
Referee: Harrison Blair
Yeovil Town (3-4-2-1? 3-1-3-3? 3-7-0?)
Substitutes: Matt Gould, James Daly (for Sims ’66), Troy Perrett (for Jones ’66), Josh Tobin, Aaron Jarvis, Tahvon Campbell (for McCormick ’83), Harvey Greenslade (for Works ’74)
Boreham Wood: Nathan Ashmore, Cameron Coxe, Femi Ilesanmi (for Joe Newton ’85), Chris Bush, Charlie O’Connell, Zak Brunt, Abdul Abdulmalik, Lewis Richardson (for Luke Norris ’66), Marley Miranda, Ollie Kensdale (for Aaron Henry ’77), Matt Rush
