Amateur Football Combination Premier Division

Old Meadonians 1 Enfield Old Grammarians 1

Old Meadonians dropped their first league points of the season in a lack-lustre performance against modest promotee visitors to Riverside Lands on Saturday, Enfield Old Grammarians. As he watched gravely depleted Meads struggle to gel, joint coach Paul Rumley must have asked himself why he had spent two weeks away from the touchline on a fruitless scouting trip when his time might have been better spent trawling the clubs so-called depths for talent developed on his own doorstep, whence he and co-coach Rory Vermeulen had plucked Jireh Makoukou, late of Meads’ seventh team but now parading his precocious ability in their first team squad.

Together with Ryan Bright, Matt Allen and Jake Gowers, Makoukou is part of a lively band of youngsters, all under twenty-one, who are at the core of Meads’ efforts to rejuvenate their squad which is at present merely ticking over and, in the aftermath of last season’s scary end-game run-in, in need of expansion.

Still without a stalwart quartet of senior players who have yet to play this year, Meads started with Ed Glover leading the line but he drifted out to the right in search of space and we were treated to the spectacle of Ryan Bright, although supposedly tucked in behind Glover, actually having to spearhead the attack, all ten stone of him, giving away three stone in holding off Enfields’ central defenders.

Nonetheless it was the hosts who shaded the early exchanges before losing Centre-back John Shea to a pulled calf muscle on ten minutes. He was substituted by Aidan Chapman and five minutes later his shot was parried by the keeper for Bright to tidy up. Further chances fell to Meads, with Glover rolling his marker to curl a shot just wide of the far post from the edge of the area and midfielder Jack Costello having a near post shot well saved. The visitors more than held their own throughout the second and built up momentum to equalise through a melee with fifteen minutes to go.

Squad: Robinson, Mace, O’Sullivan, Shea, Mantell, Clarke, Gower, Costello, Allen, Bright, Glover, Quinn, Makoukou, Chapman.

September 25, 2013