Game Of Two Halves For Old Meads

Amateur Football Alliance Senior Cup: Bank of England 4, Old Meadonians 6

This Amateur Football Alliance Senior Cup-Tie at the Bank of England’s palatial home in Bank Lane on Saturday had to be seen to be believed since it was the epitome of the clichéd much used and euphemistic saying, “It was a game of two halves”.

By half-time Old Meadonians were 5-nil up and the hosts should have been dead and awaiting burial. However, just as some Victorian coffins had little bells on top which could be rung from the inside if the ‘deceased’ woke up, this time the so called ‘stiff’, far from being defunct, as in Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” scene, soon proved it was very much alive and kicking. Within fifteen minutes of the restart, in a supercharged blitzkrieg the hosts had ‘banked’ four and looked the more likely team to score next and thereby notch the equaliser, but even to add a couple more for a comfortable win.

In effect Meads had suffered a power cut, had turned off and the hosts had eagerly gobbled up the slack on offer from them to complete a total role reversal. The first half never came near presaging the unusual events to come as traffic was one way throughout with the lights on constant red for the hosts and with regular fines being levied on them every ten minutes. Nick Wilson started the rot on five minutes by boring in from the right and firing in a cross shot from fifteen yards which was deflected past the Bank goalie by a defender. Just like clockwork ten minutes later Ryan Bright picked up a loose ball thirty five yards out, quickly ate up ten yards and put the ball unerringly into the top right hand corner. For Meads’ third another ten minutes on, Ed Glover was played in over the top, just beat the keeper to the ball but when he parried it, Glover reacted smartly to slip the ball to Craig Jones who held off the attention of two scrambling defenders to slot home. Number four came on thirty minutes as Charlie Caine whipped in a low in-swinging corner from the right bypassing the man posted to cut this ploy out, for Jones to sweep the ball in from five yards. Five minutes from the interval Jones escaped from close arrest down the middle and out-manoeuvred the onrushing keeper by shooting early and brushing his outstretched hand aside to complete a classy hat-trick.
HT 0-5
What happened now was not in the script: From the restart the hosts decided to become unwelcoming, swarming all over their guests like a nest of angry hornets hounding the miscreant who had dared to stir them up by poking a stick into their abode. They tore into Meads setting them back on their heels by treating their mid-field as if it weren’t there. Fifteen minutes later they had four in the bag, two from unstoppable long range screamers and had interspersed them with lancet-like thrusts which had Gary Robinson earning his keep by diving at the feet of a series of invaders who were queuing up to take him on. Now it was the visitors who were on the wrack, with Bank looking ever more likely to get the equaliser and seemingly only Robinson who now adding a high wire element to his repertoire, with death-defying tips-over, between them and certain victory.
Somehow Meads held on until the eighty-fifth minute when they cleared a corner out to Jones on the left and his instant raking cross-field pass put Wilson away on the right to close rapidly and fire the ball across the keeper into the far corner. The explanation to this phenomenon could only be that the low and blinding sun was blazing straight across field into the eyes of Meads’ managers and not only could they not see events on the pitch but communications with those on the pitch were effectively cut off.

December 8, 2016