Outside Chance of 8th Successive League Triumph for Old Mead's

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division: Honourable Artillery Coy. 0 Old Meadonians 2

It is a tribute to the depth of management skills that Paul Rumley and Rory Vermeulen have brought to their rich six year reign at Old Meadonians that, in a season dogged by a dwindling and injury riven squad, Meads have been able to win the prestigious Amateur Football Alliance Senior Cup and are still in with an outside chance of an eighth successive league triumph.

On Saturday the management’s ploy was to use the long journey to Mottingham by public transport as a mobile means of gelling, with success.

The match itself was a tense affair, living up to its billing, with the hosts desperately needing points to make themselves safe from the drop and Meads fanning the still glowing embers of their league campaign.

The pattern of the game was a repeat of the A.F.A. cup final with, as Nottsborough did in that match, H.A.C. playing neat supportive football but coming up against an impervious Meads’ back line and ultimately lacking the cutting edge to get into the scorebook.

Thus, with only fifteen minutes to go it was still nil all, when striker Colin Hawkins came deep to pull space. He then took the ball on his chest and swept a superb diagonal forty yard pass into the path of the speeding Peter Eguae whose deep cross from the right hand by-line was massively headed in by Leon Smith.

Meads now began to dominate and with five minutes left Dwayne Rhone burst past two players as if they were bollards, fed Smith on the left and motored on to volley home Smith’s pinpoint cross.

Team: Toyne, McCombe, Pointer, Quin, Eguae, Lovell, Gerrish, Rhone, Glover, Hawkins, Smith.

April 23, 2008