Old Meads Take A Giant Step Forward

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division - Honourable Artillery Company 2 Old Meadonians 5

Old Meadonians took a giant step forward to topple Honourable Artillery Company from the top of the table and put them firmly in their place at Dulwich, this without the services of influential skipper, Will Gerrish and speedy striker Matt Allen, both laid low temporarily.

Meads’ manager, Luke Graham need not have worried however, as Gerrish’s role as playmaker and ball carrying disciplinarian was eagerly assumed by Jack Costello, in only his second start this season, on the left and, with new boy, Chris Richardson and returnee Ryan Bright creating havoc in the middle, striker Nick Wilson was given the freedom of the park on the right and ultimately cleaned up with an opportunist’s hat trick.

The difference between the two sides was not in the quality of their football which, after all, had taken HAC to the top but in the hosts’ reply to adversity, compared with the self belief shown by the ebullient visitors, when they went behind after taking a tenth minute lead through Costello’s far post header from Bright’s cross.

Meads’ short-lived lead was cancelled out by another far post header courtesy of lax marking and, despite Graham’s reinforcing his team’s resolution with a rousing half-time exhortation, ten minutes after the restart they were behind when a right wing break caught their left flank open for the ball to be slotted at the far post. The visitors’ reply was to step up their game which resulted in their equalising with Wilson’ first ten minutes later. From hereon the hosts were a spent force as heads went down and first Chris Richardson restored Meads lead and then Wilson clinched his Man of the Match Award with two more in the dying minutes.

Squad: Robinson, Goode, Mace, Shea, De Coteau, Gowers, Greenslade, Bright, (Boynton), Costello, Wilson, Richardson.

January 25, 2016