Old Meads Leap Back To The Top Of The Table

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division: Old Dorkinians 1 Old Meadonians 3

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division
Old Dorkinians 1 Old Meadonians 3

Two weeks ago Old Meadonians were busy handing down a 3-nil lesson in how to remain pragmatic in the face of a stern challenge from Southern Amateur League Senior Division Leaders, Alleyn Old Boys in the Amateur Football Alliance Senior Cup. The lesson on that occasion was how to engineer matters in such a way that, despite the visitors hogging possession, they failed to make a notch on the score-stick. As a result of this last Saturday’s efforts, however, Old Meadonians have leapt back to the top of the table, proving that rivals will find it hard to separate them from their unbeaten record.

Once more the plan was for this to be a purposeful, restrained and merciful dispatch of Old Dorkinians who are holding on just above the dropping zone on goal difference. However, after Meads steadily built up pressure, twenty minutes on a burst of brilliance ignited by right back Joe Harrison set Nick Wilson free to skin his marker and pull back a low cross for the swooping Ed Glover to beat his man to the ball with a death defying dive and leave the hapless keeper clutching at ‘pleine air’.

Unfortunately this all happened so quickly that Meads went into a trance inducing the usual freeze frame which at best involves harmless admiration of the efforts of colleagues trying to extricate themselves from sticky situations and at worst means defenders having little choice other than to hump the ball up field and hopefully out of danger. Inevitably, this time sod’s law saw to it that the net result was the laying down of a pristine red carpet for a nippy wingman to scamper down and appreciatively blot the innocent Joe Beharrie’s copy book. Having come round, Meads were saved by another regular occurrence: Yet another jinking Ryan Bright run was illegally terminated in the area and Stuart Holt administered the antidote to restore superiority.
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The press were kept away from the half time talk and the best that could be garnished from oblique and grunted replies to pointed queries was ‘tighten up at the back and galvanise up field’ although it could well be assumed that the latter part of this instruction which meant go back to playing as you did for the opening twenty minutes of the match, might well also stimulate the safe transit of the ball out of defence. The immediate surge from the team on the restart was ample proof that there would be no mistakes from then on and within ten minutes Stuart Holt had risen to nod in a whipped Jack Costello freekick to make it 3-1.

From this moment the hosts came quietly and the visitors even had the unnecessary luxury of snubbing a further penalty chance as, once more, Bright’s enforced summersault yielded a hat-trick chance, only for Holt to signal his intentions too clearly and the keeper to save. The closing fifteen minutes brought a cameo return for livewire front man Craig Jones, back and raring to go after a two month lay off for injury. The MoM award went to Ryan Bright with semi-sober celebrations as the squad focussed on next week’s top of the table shoot-out with Old Hamptonians.

Squad: Beharie, Harrison, Chapman©, Shea, Costello, Gowers, Taylor (Timmins), Holt, Glover (Jones), Wilson, Bright.

December 15, 2017