Amateur Football Combination Premier Division

Old Meadonians 3 Old Aloysians 3

Old Meadonians penultimate league game of the season saw joint coaches, Paul Rumley and Rory Vermeulen, forced to flesh out their skeletal squad by blooding youngsters from as low as the seventh team who, with Meads safe in mid-table and visitors Old Aloysians almost certainly doomed, were able to get a taste of things up the sharp end and showed themselves eager and able in every respect.

This season poor weather before Xmas exacerbated the normal end of campaign log-jam to high-light a perennial problem which penalises more successful clubs and Meads in particular because, at this time, they are usually on tour, by making a lottery of the end game. Although Vermeulen is inclined to disagree, to the press corps, the squad has been at least a half dozen short.

The palmy days of the noughties, when the squad was twenty-five and numbers of players actually used would be over thirty, are certainly gone but season-ending injuries to five of the core of the squad had alarm bells jangling ominously, triggering, as possible solutions, byes for premier division clubs in additional cup competitions.

This back-ground set the scene for a forgettable match in which Meads took the lead mid-way through the first half through Nick Wilson, surrendered it before the interval, took it back through Matt Allen, donated two to the visitors’ rescue fund and then equalised late through Craig Jones.

Squad: Robinson, Mace, N. Jones, Chapman, Mahoukou, Da Cruz, Brennan, Eklof, Allen, C. Jones, Wilson, Akinwale, Rhone.

May 8, 2013