A disappointing result from this top of the table clash

A well organised and comparatively youthful Havering presented the toughest test yet for Captain Stubbo and his Merry Men. Seems these days that all opposition teams are younger and quicker than us but even so, we fancied our chances.

We started well and controlled a somewhat crowded midfield forcing Havering to go around the outside. This they did very well, eventually working out that they could go around us and penetrate our D. We found ourselves very quickly 1-0 down to a soft goal, despite a treble save from Holmsie in goal, which annoyed us somewhat.

Despite dominating the rest of the first half we just couldn’t convert any of the many short corners we worked hard to create. It’s clearly too early in the season for our thoroughbreds to reach the peak in performance their minds expect, and as time went on frustration set in. A closely contested match saw the heat rise in unseasonaly warm temperatures, and Fessey-O picked up a green card for his usual 'abrasive' approach to the game.

The half time respite didn’t help us much and when we returned to battle things began to slip away from us. We kept the umpires busy writing up cards for a while which served to blunt our potential but despite the card frenzy we continued to dominate overall and rack up even more short corners. It just wasn’t to be our day.

Fantastic performances from motoring Mark in the middle, top tackling from Webby and Nashy and a warm welcome back to the club for Prit Mandair after 25 years away who slotted in just like it was yesterday.

A game to forget, although with positives to build on, but we remain 2nd in the league and will definitely put the disappointment to bed in the coming weeks.

Clarky

MoM: Mark Butt
JoS: Pete Borrie (who converted his Green card to a yellow in one seamless action and left us with 10 men for ten 10 minutes).