Men’s 4th XI 3-0 Cheam 2s
At last we have caught up with the bulk of the league by playing our game postponed from mid January.
After last night I am still buzzing even following a morning hike with Denton and a visit to Waitrose to do the weekly shop with the bulk of the ageing Godalming community. Elsewhere in Surrey Guyzer’s children have gone feral and have initiated a new celebratory day into the school calendar, “hyper active day”. Even better is that we play again tomorrow. Happy days.
Breaking new ground for the 4s by playing a midweek league fixture for the first time was a strange experience and one that could have gone horribly wrong. Even the late withdrawal of Adam, who had forgotten that the interview stage in The Apprentice was on TV, didn’t affect our stride.
The wise old sages watching the game were pleasantly surprised at the speed and quality of the game as Cheam came with a full squad and intent on giving us problems. Cheam were a far better outfit, as are we, than in the earlier game where they hardly troubled us and a keen and hard fought game was played out in front of our biggest crowd of the season, 10, including the ferals.
The game turned on the final play of the first half when Ben zipped home a drag flick high into the net to give us a crucial second goal to add to the top finish by golden stick heir apparent Jake deftly lifting the ball home that had been slipped to him. Ben’s goal came after 5 to 10 minutes of concerted pressure from Cheam, their best period of the match, and did seem to take the wind from their sails.
The main difference between the two sides was our ability to retain the ball for longer periods and build pressure whilst Cheam, although looking dangerous when breaking from defence, lacked the final pass to such an extent that they did not have a shot on our goal all game. Their one short corner was mis trapped and broke down.
The second half was also high tempo with the game being put to bed well before Guyser’s kids by Ben half volleying an invitingly bouncing ball in the middle of the D into the goal.
To their credit Cheam fought until the end but were unable to break down our back 4 and we ran out 3 – 0 winners.
Although this was probably our best 14 squad performance of the season Nasher was the stand out player in centre mid who ran himself into the ground, quite literally on 2 occasions following 50 yard weaves.
With 2nd place in our league playing 3rd this coming weekend we could be in prime position to win the league on the back of 11 straight wins against each of the teams in our league. Not sure this was uppermost in our thoughts when we dropped 8 points in 12 in late October and early November.
Thank you Virge and Malcolm for giving up your Thursday evening and umpiring in a way to take into account the quality of play on the pitch.
16.10 v Surbiton Cobras next up and please bring plenty of e numbers for Guyser’s offspring. (David Knapp)
