Brave Bees take point

Brentford 2 Gillingham 2

Weather, bright but showery, windy, yet sunny and also cold, and patches of warmness

Rainbows—2

Att: 5,759

What an eventful game !
Really woke me up after a heavy night and headache threatened to affect my viewing pleasure.
There’s nothing I love more than bee-rating a lino, and boy did he deserved the verbal beating he took.
As Brentford started brightly, making 4 big changes from the recent league team.
Masters (19), Carder-Andrews (17), Osborne (18) and Tomlin (23) all came into the side.
Sadly, Masters lasted only 23 minutes, before he was expelled.
As Gary Mulligan seized on Karleigh Osborne’s slip, Masters made slight contact and brought the Gillingham forward down.
A melee ensued after Duncan Jupp ran 50 yards to demand he be sent off. This despite the fact that O’Connor was on the line and Mulligan had his back to goal when he was felled.
In no interpretation of the rules was this a sending off….However the linesman and ref agreed with Mr Jupp, and sent off the young keeper.
With no sub keeper on the bench, Defender John Mousinho emerged to be the Bees Keeper.
1-0 down, and it looked grim for the 10 men.
However, pleasingly, they showed guts and charachter and got on with the job in hand.
Heywood headed the Bees level after 36 mins and some masterly work by Olly Skulason, set sub Willock away for the 2nd just before half time.

The second half was a battle for the Bees. Mousinho pulled off at least 2 great saves, but couldnt keep out Michael Flynns effort on 74 mins which ended the scoring.
A few more battling performances like that and the Bees will be buzzing up the table again !

Masters 6 looked nervous, but had no real dramas
O’Connor 7 rallied the troops
Heywood 7 a mighty display from the big man
Osborne 6 slipped at the wrong time, did enough otherwise
Frampton 7
Carder-Andrews 6 no time to shine (sacrificed for emergency keeper Mousinho 25 mins-8 some quality work between the sticks)
Skulason 8 worked hard to create the moves and dominate the midfield
Griffiths 7 a decent game
Tomlin 7 tireless running from the little fella (subbed for Pinault 70 mins, 6 had no impact)
Kuffour 6 a very quiet game
Wijnhard 6 (subbed for Willock 34 mins, good goal, but not enough effort in the 2nd half)