There was also a small matter of a minute's applause to mark the passing of George Best which was observed by everyone. A great, and different, tribute to a great player who finished his professional playing career at Dean Court.
Both sides opened the match with the intent of probing each other's defence. Bournemouth had a couple of early corners, which came to nothing. The Franchise Holders also created a couple of their own chances, thankfully an offside flag saved any embarrassment (a) for poor defending and (b) a shocking miss!
On the quarter hour mark, Bournemouth got themselves into trouble when Young headed the ball across his own goal. Thankfully the resulting corner came to nothing.
A neat move started by Stewart found Steve Fletcher who managed to hold the ball up for Hayter to feed Surman. Working his way forward, Surman was unlucky with an attempted chip, which wasn't far away from hitting the target with the keeper stranded.
On 33 minutes the keeper found himself outside his area, and handling (!!), which generated a yellow card. The customary Stocky free kick was lacking as it went straight into the wall. In another move 3 minutes later Foley was well and truly flattened in what was becoming typical Franchise tactics. Foley curled the ball over the wall and it nestled nicely in the corner of the net! A fine first goal if ever there was one!
Our yellow card count was blemished at the end of the half when Steve Fletcher perfectly timed a tackle to remove the ball from a Franchised player only to be dismayed that the ref decided to produce a card. We were just as surprised as the tackle was perfect in timing and execution.
HT: 1-0
The second half started brightly enough for Bournemouth. Surman (50 mins) somehow managed to place his header plumb against the post when we thought that it might just have been easier for him to score! Steve Fletcher delivered a fine header minutes later when Stock produced a ball from nothing for Foley to thread it across to Fletcher. The keeper had to be alert to make sure that the header didn't drop over his head for our second of the afternoon.
Hayter managed to miss an open goal (somehow!) when he was put clear by Steve Fletcher. From my vantage point, he must have hit the ball with the outside of his boot which saw the ball sliced wide of the left hand upright.
As well as teams displaying different qualities, referees can too!! This was more than ably demonstrated when Mr Dorr was booking players for fairly tame challenges in the first half, but then failed to book similar or worse challenges in the second half. No wonder players and supporters get frustrated with the men in the middle.
Foley crossed the ball to Cooke with 8 minutes left. Cooke composed himself for a few moments before firing a low shot into the bottom left hand corner.
Another example of the hard man tactics the dirty Franchise FC players tried to play came when Hayter was well and truely flattened. Red card deserved .... yellow card produced!
All in all a professional performance from Bournemouth which deserved the win and our first clean sheet in quite a while.
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AFCB: Stewart, Young, O'Connor, Cooper, Hart, Foley, Stock, Browning, Surman, Hayter, Fletcher
Subs: Moss, Purches, Cooke (on for Stock, 71), Rodrigues, Keene (on for Hayter, 91)
Andy Burton, Portsmouth