Match Report

Reserves recover from a 2-0 deficit to win first league game of the season

A game of two halves. And 9 bookings.

After 4 straight friendly wins we were given a sharp wake up call in the first half. We were second best all over the park for 45 minutes. Orpington went 1 up early on, which they fully deserved. Then, to save Joe the embarrassment of an own goal, I very sportingly gave them a penalty. I tried to play innocent but had indeed pulled their centre forwards shirt, almost off his back. 2-0.

For the rest of the half we were nervous on the ball and resorted to lumping it up field at every opportunity.

Our first half wasn\'t helped by our skipper Ad Ellson deciding that entertaining Australian relatives was more important than turning up to play. Shocking behaviour. Somehow we forgot to give him the kit for this, so skip you have it next week. Errol Ahmed pulled his hammy 20 minutes in to compound our problems!!

Half time brought 2 further changes with Matt Reynolds replacing me at centre half and Nigel Johnstone coming on on the wing.

The second half was totally different. We started playing through our midfield and opened up Orpington at will. In a 20 minute period we were 4-2 up. Matt Ellis started the turn around after diving to win a pen. I don\'t condone cheating when it is against us, but absolutely adore it when we do it.

Billy Webb unleashed a rocket to equalise. Then Al Barnes scored a \"floory\" goal. Stu Lentons pinpoint quick free kick made it 4-2. They got back into it when the quickest man in the world up top for them completed his hatrick. He was annoyingly fast. But he dived a lot. No one likes a cheat.

Our first game in the Kent league ending in a deserved victory. Made all the better by their manager explaining that they had 6 first team players playing. Their first team are in the Kent Invicta League which is roughly 400 divisions above us, so a great result.

Nigel Johnstone picked up our inaugural MOM trophy. We found it. It\'s old and has a little bloke on top with one arm. He has this week to show it off to his friends, family and work colleagues.

Al Barnes had new boots. Orange and Blue. They didn\'t work as he couldn\'t kick the ball for the first 20 minutes. Lee Cross got scratched on his back during the game. He made a properly funny joke about it being the forward trying to get out of his pocket. He repeated said joke loads and loads of times. Rich Piles was gutted when I asked him to come off the bench as it meant he had to have a shower.

Final note on the game goes to the very, very strange noises one of their players kept making whenever the ball went near him. Incredibly off putting and more than a little strange

Somehow in a game which wasn\'t that dirty we managed to win the card count 5-4. Not great!!

No game next week. So we\'re all off to play golf. I\'m pretty confident Gibbo will win. If he does he gets the MOM trophy. The lucky git.

Team - Lee Gibbs; Joe Slater, Dave Martin, Luke Johnson, Lee Cross; Matt Ellis, Louis Hussey, Stu Lenton; Billy Webb, Al Barnes, Errol Ahmed
Subs - Rich Piles, Ad Ellson, Nigel Johnstone, Matt Reynolds