Injury Hit Old Meads Beat Bottom Side
Amateur Football Combination Premier Division Old Meadonians 3 Old Belgravians 1
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Old Meadonians Old Meadonians kept up the pressure on league leaders Old Albanians with a comfortable home win over bottom club Old Belgravians.
Just in case the league leaders make an uncharacteristic slip which seems unlikely at present, Meads are running into solid form and waiting to pounce. However, with a third of their already diminished squad on the injury list, pounce may not be the dynamic verb that springs to mind as they count themselves lucky to be able to call on the services of veterans, mid-fielder Kevin Quinn and centre-back Dermot Jordan. Jordan has not seen regular first team action for three seasons but is more than capable at the back and later showed he still knew where the net was.
That said, the hosts penned the visitors in from the start and, with momentum coming from a dominant mid-field, strikers Alex Jones and Colin Hawkins, the latter just back from serving a disciplinary club ban, were soon making inroads but had little luck as final balls either lacked finesse or were just too pacy and crosses marginally failed to make connections.
The feature of this initial thrust was the burgeoning partnership of Hawkins and Jones, the former of whom has learned to live with the loss of his searing pace and to harness willing work-horse Jones whose powerful running was a constant thorn in the side of the visitors. However, these days Meads don’t seem able to avoid giving the opposition a goal start and so it was on Saturday. On fifteen minutes Belgravians got a corner and failure to attack the ball led to Gary Robinson having to pull off a magnificent double save, from the initial header and subsequent shot from the rebound.
Five minutes later hesitancy in the area meant that a cross from the left was put in after decisive intervention by a striker. Almost immediately Jack Costello’s thirty yard free-kick clipped the top of the bar, heralding a more urgent approach from the hosts and on thirty minutes Jordan produced the equaliser by heading a corner onto the bar and then netting the rebound before anyone could react.
The second half was considerably more routine as Belgravians flagged and were inexorably worn down by continuing pressure but it was not until there was twenty minutes to go that Hawkins broke the deadlock, beating the defence to a Costello cross from the right and sliding the ball under the diving keeper. There were fifteen minutes on the clock when the exhausted Alex Jones gave way for Quinn to come on in mid-field. Peter Eguae now moved up alongside Hawkins to surprise Belgravians with his pace. He was just thwarted in two lightning thrusts but with five minutes to go it was third time lucky as he latched onto a Will Gerrish through ball to score from fifteen yards.
In their post match briefing Meads’ coaches, Paul Rumley and Rory Vermeulen, expressed their thanks to the whole team for digging the club out of a hole, especially mid-fielder, Nick Jones, for dropping in at right back and playing a stormer which earned him the MoM award and they also commended Chris Thomas for another non-stop stellar performance.
Team: Robinson, N. Jones, Jordan, Palmer, Graham, Thomas, Gerrish, Costello, Eguae, Hawkins, A. Jones, (Quinn).
November 16, 2010