SAL - 4th October 2003

Most of the action on Saturday happened to me before I arrived at Weirside's ground.  

7.45am - girlfriend found my first grey hair ( is this to do with playing in the first team?) and yes I was really up at this time. 
9.30am - girlfriend is happy!! (made her tea) and I am packing up boot of car to go to dump. 
10.30am - arrive back from dump and ring Andy Burke to check he knows where he is going - he drops out injured!  Excellent! 
11.00am - Wiggy rings. We chat a lot these days. I think he fancy's me now his wife's pregnant!  Anyway, Michael Winyard drops out!  More excellent news.  Wiggy is relatively more happy than me.  He now realises that playing in the centre of the park is much more exciting than centre back. 
11.03am - sit down and think how on earth we are going to pull 3 points out of the bag today.  No G.Baker, S.Swan. M.Winyard, A.Burke, S.Clare.  Also D.Tilley has been pants so far!  Sorry Dave.  Cut down from 13 to 5 or 6 pints and you will be able to see on Saturdays.  M.Tilley is injured, I'm not feeling to hot myself (see grey hair).  Goals are hard to come by and our joint top scorer has just been promoted from centre half to centre mid! 

A couple of hours later we are trying to convince Danny Glenister that its a good idea to let one of his star studded team come with the 1st XI - all very professional!  We win.  R.Cheeseman agrees that on his first game back since Feb. he will come (also a qualified sports injury therapist, very handy in the 1st team). 

Arrive in plenty of time - reasonable warm up - kick off.  After 6 minutes of the opposition tearing us to pieces and most of our eleven watching as they did so, they scored!  20 minutes into match we start playing and realise we are actually quite good when we try and dominate for the last 10 minutes of the half!  The chances did not really come.  Gareth Hobbs came closest with a fierce shot that fizzed just over the bar! 

Second half continues in the same vein, Carshalton played some nice football without creating many clear cut chances.  Promising displays from J.Chambers and N.Collard at the back and M.Pickett up front.  Bodes well for the future.  Keith was solid as normal and Dave Tilley, yes DAVE Tilley played very well on the left (must have got home before breakfast).  Just as it really looked as though a share of the points would be a fair result, Costus rolled the ball out to a surprised R.Cheeseman and the centre forward nipped in and scored.  2 - 0 game over!  Keith told Weirside a porky pie, and we cleared off to the Plough for match analysis and Stella. 

THE END

P.S. If any of the well educated in the first team fancy writing a match report, get e-mailing!

Andy Cook