Match Report

It was a hot day and the top pitch was rock hard. Although this didn’t contribute to a great game of football it is true to say that we dominated from start to finish and deserved to win by a comfortable margin. Our team was:

Edwards (GK)
Martin (LB)
Tapsfield (CB)
Pragnell (CB)
Cross (RB)
Head (LM)
Lenton (CM)
Charlton (CM)
Small (RM)
Nethercot (CF)
Evans (CF) (Captain)

Subs:
Tanton, Nott, Havers.

Mark returned in goal after his recent broken toe and fortunately didn’t have a great deal to do. Chris survived the 90 minutes although I know he was feeling his hamstring a bit and Stu played well in centre mid despite also ending the game in a lot of pain. We are like the walking wounded at the moment. Aaron came to watch and he too is not 100% although hopefully will be available next week.

Chislehurst only had 10 men which is not the best when you are fighting relegation and this helped us to take control of the game early on. Whilst we are critical of ourselves and would like to have done better we did play some good stuff in places, particularly when we switched the play from one wing to the other. Most of our best moves came down the right and this was where we scored our first goal from. One of their attacks petered out and Mark rolled the ball out to Lee. Lee carried it forward before playing it to Sam S who was in space on the right wing. Sam controlled the ball well and struck a powerful half volley off the near post and in.

We probably should have scored a second but we got caught offside once too often by Chislehurst’s high line as we tried to play the ball through. We looked better when we did little triangles and we did much more of that in the second half as they tired. Spence replaced me at half time as my hamstring had gone and he scored soon into the second half. Dan received the ball on the left and hit a cross-come-shot toward the far post where Spence slid in and scored. At this point Danny replaced Pragnell with Tant; Tant went into centre mid and Chris dropped back to centre back. Soon afterwards Dave was replaced by Daragh at full back. Our third goal came after a defensive mix up. Spence chased down a through ball and the keeper seemed to successfully take it round him once before trying to do it again and failing. Spence shot at goal and the ball hit their defender and went in. Spence tried to claim that this was his goal in the bar afterwards, and when I put it to him that everyone else said his shot was going wide he admitted that his shot was “not quite on target” but he felt that it should be his goal anyway. I’m glad to see it has gone on the website as an O.G.!

There is not much else to say about the game really. I thought we all played OK without ever setting the world on fire. Notable performances from Taps and Lee who deservedly shared the man of the match award. I also thought that Russ worked very hard upfront and Pragnell had a good last game of the season before his operation.

Next week is massive as we are away at Knights Old Boys. We are a good bet to finish third now, but there is a plausible scenario where Knights win 3 of their last 4 games and we lose our last 2 – that would leave us in fourth place and promotion less likely. Danny is now away sunning himself in Florida so let’s make sure that we are texting him with good news next weekend – we’ve worked hard all season to get where we are and we now need two big performances to win the promotion which we deserve.

Man of the match: Richard Tapsfield/Lee Cross