Mead's 'Storm' to Victory Despite High Winds

AFC Division Premier Division, Old Meadonians 3 Old Salvatorians 2

“It’s Doris what’s done for this game” might be a suitably colloquial epitaph for the wreck of a league match that two teams, who found conditions a bit trying, served up to a hardy bunch of spectators at Riverside Lands on Saturday. The tail end of this force eleven gale out in the Atlantic gave players the nigh on impossible task of battling against winds gusting up to twenty miles an hour which made making passes of twenty yards hazardous in extremis.

It became a matter of which team dealt more effectively with these problems that decided where the laurels would rest and that did not augur well for the visitors who, bottom of the table with eight points from fifteen games and a goal deficit of thirty two, looked unlikely to be able to cope as well as their hosts. The wind tended to swirl but mostly took a route towards the allotments’ goal of which Meads’ Simon Greening was custodian for the first half. Injury to Daniel Donovan, suspension for Charlie Caine and with Simon Richardson not available this gave Meads’ management the chance to ensure a well oiled squad for next week’s Senior Cup Semi-final by giving starts to Jake Gowers, Jack Costello and Michael Richards.

Even against the wind Meads were ahead on fifteen minutes when a Jack Costello free-kick fell nicely for Craig Jones to sweep in his twenty second of the season from ten yards. However, from then on Salvos pinned the hosts back and, although Meads’ defence creaked under strain, the visitors’ only chance in the first half came from another free kick which was whipped in and when the ball wasn’t cleared effectively, was popped in from six yards. The hosts had no trouble holding out till half time and were ahead again within a minute of the restart when Jack Costello fizzed across a low corner from the right, Craig Jones dummied the ball at the near post and Richards planted it into the roof of the net.

Now it was Meads’ turn to test the visitors’ resolution in the teeth of a forty minute siege which unfortunately had the hosts’ strikers and mid-fielders lining up like novices at a fairground rifle range to take it in turns to spurn chance after chance to put the result in no doubt. It took a superb volley from just inside the box from Craig Jones to put the visitors out of their misery and seal his award of the MoM accolade with five minutes to go.

Squad: Greening, N. Jones, Britner, Chapman, Costello, Shea, Gowers, Bright, Richards (E. Glover), C. Jones, Wilson, subs, not used, Harrison, McKenna.

AMATEUR FOOTBALL ALLIANCE SENIOR CUP SEMI-FINAL
CLASH OF THE TITANS
OLD MEADONIANS F.C. V POLYTECHNIC F.C.
SATURDAY 4th MARCH 2017
K.O. 3PM
AT ACTONIANS’ GROUND GUNNERSBURY DRIVE EALING.

March 3, 2017