Amateur Football Combination Premier Division

Old Hamptonians 0 Old Meadonians 1

Old Meadonians opened their eighty-fifth campaign by throwing down the gauntlet with a clinical display of power football which, although it was enough to earn them the points while flattering their hosts, was meagrely rewarded by just the one goal, thus keeping the eventual result on a blunt knife edge at Dean Road Hampton on Saturday.

Meads’ joint managers, Paul Rumley and Rory Vermeulen elected for a four five one line up which left them making the thorny decision to have the rangy Ed Glover leading the initial onslaught, leaving the darting runs of last season’s top scorer, Craig Jones available on the bench in reserve.

In the event, Glover, immediately found space behind Hamptonians’ midfield and, closely backed by Meads’ own marauding midfield led by workaholic Will Gerrish, his perfectly timed diagonal runs tore huge holes in champions Old Hamptonians’ defence.

Throughout Hamptonians were subjected to a thorough going examination which initially rocked them back on their heels and, well before the end of the game, left them punch drunk. This meant that, as might be expected from a team which finished last season with a whopping plus forty goal difference enhanced by a mingy eighteen conceded, early on Meads’ front runners faced the full panoply of hand to hand fighting with the Hampton equivalent of the Maginot Line at the edge of the home area and for twenty minutes batter as they might the hosts held out.

However, the hosts’ attacking aspirations were kept under lock and key and limited to sporadic forays most of which were aerial and easily repulsed by Meads’s acrobatic centre backs Ali McCombe and Aidan Chapman. Hamptons’ desperate last ditch defence was at the expense of a string of searching corners and free-kicks, yielding a Chapman header back across goal saved by the home keeper who also saved

September 17, 2014