Huff and Puff Not Enough for Meads

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division - Old Meadonians 0 Old Parmiterians 1

Old Meadonians semi-finally waved goodbye to their outside championship chances when they succumbed to the solitary goal in a taut and closely contested game at Riverside Lands on Saturday. Meads’ former coach, Rory Vermeulen, on temporary touchline duty in the absence of coach Jack Costello, was philosophical in his post match briefing.

The Chiswick team were paying the price for a poor opening sequence to their campaign when they drew five matches to put themselves near the bottom of the pile, there was only going to be one goal in the game and that, probably justly, fell to visitors, mid-table Parmiterians.

The fact of the matter is that Meads, even firing on three cylinders, made Parms, in what the visitors’ coach said was their best performance this season, fight for every inch of the way and the few chances there were, were evenly shared. By his own strict standards, Meads’ striker, Alex Jones, was, in his own opinion, minimally below his best, but in reality the three chances he carved out came from his undaunting perseverance and he was unlucky to be just wide twice and to find the keeper’s speed off the line too good on the third occasion.

In the end, even Parms’ winner which came with twenty minutes to go had an element of good fortune in it, as a twenty yard shot from the right hand of the box threaded through a thicket of legs to deflect off a lonesome pine past Meads’ hapless keeper Simon Greening. Meads still have the most slender of outside chances but, with Minchendenians and Parms having four games in hand, it would take a disaster of seismic proportions to upset the odds.

Team: Greening, Pointer, Palmer, Thompson, Glover, Gerrish, Graham, Richards, Quinn, (Granville), Hawkins, Jones

April 14, 2010