Amateur Football Combination Premier Division

Old Meadonians 2 Kings Old Boys 1

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Old Meadonians are back at the top of the Amateur Football Combination Premier Division, albeit with three teams snapping at their heels just two points below, but this was a game for them to learn lessons from as Kings Old Boys, the team Meads beat 6-1 five weeks ago to send them plummeting down the table, held their hosts to a narrow one goal margin and this with ten men on the field for a good half an hour after intemperate language saw one of their number depart in the second half.

Meads’ problem was a growing injury list, added to two players otherwise engaged at the A.F.A.’s pleasure which had them starting with eight missing from their squad and this was compounded in the twentieth minute when their prime playmaker, Jack Costello, limped off having pulled a thigh muscle.

The result was that Meads’ cohesion was severely curtailed and, as the game progressed, they consequently found it increasingly difficult to deal with the visitors’ approach to the game which, having little skill to offer, although totally legal, was enthusiastically agricultural and eventually turned the game into a free for all and a bit of a lottery.

Meads did manage to draw first blood on fifteen minutes when a Jack Holmes corner fell loose to Costello who made no mistake from ten yards. Their second was the work of sub and second team striker Alex Jones who robbed a dozing Kings’ midfielder, on the half hour, speared twenty yards through the centre of the defence, fed Ryan Bright wide on the right and met the resultant cross to sweep the ball in from fifteen yards, commendably direct but of dazzling effectiveness and not unskilful.

After a second half which descended into a dog-fight, Kings’ goal came from a speculative twenty five yarder with ten minutes to go. Post match, Rory Vermeulen was the more vocal of Meads’ coaches. He silenced criticism by saying that any team would be happy to be top of their league and still in three cups at the Xmas break, having played, in all, fourteen matches, of which twelve have been won, with a total goal tally of fifty five against fourteen. Ed Glover just shaded Ali McCombe to the MoM award.

Squad: Greening, Goode, McCombe, O’Sullivan, Mantel, Costello (A. Jones), Shea, Gowers, Holmes, Bright, Glover, Quinn.



December 16, 2014