Amateur Football Alliance Middlesex & Essex Senior Cup.

Old Vaughnians 0 Old Meadonians 5

Another early cup game, another flock of lower division lambs to the slaughter and Old Meadonians came through their Amateur Football Alliance Middlesex & Essex Senior Cup round unscathed and with a nap hand of goals in their bag at the up market Acton home of Old Vaughnians on Saturday. As is their wont, Meads joint coaches Rory Vermeulen and Paul Rumley took advantage of the fact that they had four or five members of the squad missing to blood Jack Holmes and Alex Trotter who enjoyed being in on the kill after coming on as subs.
The hosts started with a youthful flurry of attacks, forcing a corner in the first few minutes, but made little fruitful progress as Meads, as tight as ever at the back, soon took a grip, using the pace of Ed Glover running from deep and Craig Jones foraging further forward on a constant supply of fodder from wing backs Jack Costello and Kevin Quinn to carve out early chances for both themselves and mid-fielders John Shea and Dave Brennan.

In fact the hosts never found the answer to Glover and Jones’ raking running which served Meads’ purpose until Vaughns had been penned in their own back yard and the congestion generated limited space for expansive running and Glover and Mantel came off for the young bloods to come on to feed off Jones’ darting runs.

After taking a two goal lead inside twenty minutes, the visitors sat back for half an hour, allowing Vaughns to play in mid-field and even, occasionally, to venture further forward on a short leash before, with thirty minutes to go, stepping their game up a couple of gears to encamp around the exhausted hosts’ penalty area and throttle the last ounce of resistance out of them with three further goals in the last twenty minutes. Meads’ first came on twenty minutes when their mid-field, led from the front by Will Gerrish, had given them a firm platform from which to launch attacks into home territory resulting in a series of inswinging corners from the right by Misha Mantel. From the third of these Dave Brennan headed in firmly at the far post.

Number two followed almost immediately and was the pick of the bunch as Brennan headed on Costello’s long ball down the right into the path of the lurking Jones who ran on to bury it in the far corner from just inside the box. In the late rush, with the hosts fought to a stand still, Holmes got the third when Costello’s low corner from the left caused chaos and Holmes reacted well for a debut stab in. Not content with his haul so far, Holmes now robbed a dozy defender, drove in on the near post and gave Glover the tap in. The last came from Trotter dribbling into the area and giving voracious Jones his twelfth of the season. Will Gerrish shaded the MoM award from Dave Brennan and Jack Costello.

Squad:- Lee, Costello, Pointer, O’Sullivan, Quinn, Brennan, Shea, Gerrish, Mantel, Glover, Jones, Holmes, Trotter.

November 4, 2014