Enigmatic Hosts Cause Meads to Stumble

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division: Kings Old Boys 0 Old Meadonians 0

This result is an unfortunate and important blip in Old Meadonians’ run in of a campaign which has been a seesaw season. Pre-Christmas early exits from three cups and the dropping of ten precious league points, followed by a dramatic turnaround featuring eight wins on the trot, when, for most of their rivals, throughout this period, dog eat dog has been the byword.

It now behoves their manager/coaches, Luke Graham and Ali McCombe who, in their first season in charge, are working wonders with a limited squad, to solve the conundrum of why, ostensibly at least, the absence of playmaker Jack Costello, John Shea and leading scorer Craig Jones, all carrying niggling injuries, should leave the team bereft of ideas to break down the resistance of opponents who are languishing second from the bottom of the table with a goal difference fifty-one worse (plus 21 against minus 30) than Meads, atop the table.

How did, what has been akin to taking candy off kids for the rest of the premier division, become, on Saturday, a struggle for the league leaders to defeat the team which has been a communal punch-bag for most of the season.

Meads started brightly enough, putting their hosts’ wobbly back four under pressure but this soon turned out to be a false dawn as they huffed and puffed to produce a string of well defended corners to no avail. Nor could they blame either the perfectly manicured and very flat pitch or the weather which was clement in extremis for falling well below the standards they’ve set themselves.

They barely created more than a handful of half chances and were saved from deeper embarrassment by Kings’ callow strikers who, though they registered twice as many shots as their visitors, chose to shoot way over the target from distance rather than waiting till they saw the whites of Meads’ keeper, Garry Robinson’s eyes.

It has to be said that the visitors’ back four did a good job of keeping their foes at arms length, with blossoming left wing back, Charlie Cain even finding room to maraud forward, whereas at the other end Kings retreated behind a Maginot Line, ceding the midfield and maintained a packed area affording little room to swing a kitten let alone a boot. Midway through the first half the one swallow which does not make a summer did appear fleetingly as Jake Gowers got a snap shot away from fifteen yards but this met with an outstretched arm and vociferous appeals which were waved away by a referee who obviously couldn’t see the point of coaches who admonished their trainees to keep their hands to their sides when defending in the area.

In the dying minutes Nick Wilson threaded his way onto a through ball but was thwarted by the King’s keeper’s charge off the line to the fading strains of Doris Day’s ‘Que sera sera’. Luke Graham’s post match briefing was anything but pessimistic, stressing that Meads’ unbeaten run was now nine games and he was setting off to unravel the Gordian Knot.

Squad: Robinson, Britner, Chapman, Gerrish, Cain, N. Jones, Gowers, Bright (Ly), Glover (Mace), Wilson, Richardson. Sub, unused, Pointer.

March 22, 2016