Amateur Football Combination Premier Division

Old Meadonians 3 Bealonians 0

Back on the league trail again Old Meadonians faced a visit to a Riverside Lands recovered from its battering from the monsoon by Bealonians who, throughout the game, demonstrated why they are languishing bottom of the table, equal on points with the two teams above them but with a negative goal difference of fifteen behind them. In fact the visitors, missing one or two of their regular squad, offered little opposition and finally failed to endear themselves late in the second half by attempting to rough up two of Meads lightweight mid-fielders who were only saved from punishment by their agility.

However, this postlude ended with bookings for two home players who, feeling they weren’t getting the protection they deserved, protested too vehemently. Meads were quick out of the blocks when, just two minutes into the game Matt Allen stormed onto a right wing cross to tuck the ball in at the near post. On twenty minutes it was two as Craig Jones flung himself acrobatically forward to volley another low cross from the right into the near corner and it could have been four before the break with both Ed Glover and John Shea being just over with looping headers.

With striker Jones having come off with a twanged nerve in his back, the second half saw Meads losing the edge of their penetration and became a rather more scrappy affair than the first when Meads had played some excellent possession football but they continued to hog possession and, despite Beals’ spoiling tactics in mid-field, never relaxed their grip on the game due to the sterling work of Misha Mantel, up from the reserves and Aidan Chapman at the back. Two half chances went to marauding John Shea and the only further score came with ten minutes to go when Mantel curled a twenty five yard free-kick out of the sun past a bedazzled keeper. Coach Paul Rumley’s reaction was that he had to ensure that, having waltzed Saturday’s game against poor opposition the team raises the tempo for the visit of  third placed Honourable Artillery Company, just above them, in a six pointer. Aidan Chapman shaded the MoM award in front of Misha Mantel.    

Squad: Robinson, Chapman, Mace, O’Sullivan, Mantel, Costello, Shea, Gerrish, Allen, C. Jones, Glover, Quinn, Bright.

March 5, 2014