Old Meads Savage Depleted Service

AFA Middlesex and Essex Senior Cup: Civil Service F.C. 0 Old Meadonians 5

Civil Service from the second division of the vaunted Southern Amateur League which, in the 1930s, boasted illustrious Ipswich Town amongst its numbers, chose the wrong time to mix it with neighbours from across the railway tracks.

The came up against Old Meadonians of the Amateur Football Combination in the first round of the Amateur Football Alliance Middlesex and Essex Senior Cup on Saturday.

During the ‘off’ season Service sustained a palpable body blow by losing a half dozen high calibre players and are busy recruiting fresh legs to bring them back to strength to push for promotion. However, that was not to save them from a mauling by Meads who, in an unforgiving mood, savaged their underpowered side with a score-line which, with a bit of luck might have been doubled.

It wasn’t that the hosts were in any way inept but, against battle hardened opponents and, faced with a tenacious and mercurial multi-tined ‘Hydra’ of an attack which kept them under constant pressure, their enfiladed defence eventually collapsed.

In the first half, with a swirling wind behind them, the hosts showed they could test the visitors’ defence which, despite remaining impermeable at the back, struggled on occasion to clear the ball. Once the ball was on the ground, away from atmospheric interference, it was another story, for further up field that the difference was apparent, where Meads’ midfielders' and front runners’ pace gave them a cutting edge.

Hence, although throughout the first half play was end to end, Meads momentum was nigh on inexorable and a steady flow of corners taken by wily Jack Costello highlighted Service’s defensive difficulties. Meads’ first came in the fifteenth minute, from one such corner from the right; a muffed clearance fell to Costello who had moved back and met the ball just inside the angle of the penalty area to rifle a half volley into the far corner. Ten minutes later came a classic from flyer Nick Wilson who was put in through the middle by Ryan Bright to take the ball into the area and slap it past the oncoming keeper.

By the opening of the second half the wind had dropped considerably but this meant the ball was easier to control. It wasn’t long before Service were cut off from any chance of recovery, on the hour, with Jack Costello sealing his second successive MoM award, just shading Bright, with a volley from the edge of the area after veteran Kevin Quinn, on at left back for Charlie Cain, worked a one two with Bright to provide a controlled pull-back. Finally Bright hammered the last two nails in firstly with a dink after close cooperation from Jake Gowers on the left and theen with a searing run from left to right across the area which stranded both his marker and the keeper for him to net from a narrow angle.

Squad: Robinson, Campbell, Pointer, Chapman, Cain, Costello, Bright, Gowers, Shea, C. Jones, Wilson, Richards, Quinn, Richardson.

September 27, 2016