Meeting in our car park on Saturday lunchtime, things didn’t start well.  Firstly, Ryan Polley's face matched the colour of the Carshalton kit, having celebrated his 21st birthday the night before.  He confirmed his hangover was in full flow by vomiting into the base of a tree shortly after meeting.  Not long after, Nick Denny turned up, and having helped Ryan celebrate his birthday, was in a similar state, just a lot noisier.  We also had a no show by one of our players, so persuaded Elliott, who had been substituted by the 8’s (early kick off) due to injury to come with us, along with super sub Nigel Findlay, who we found wandering around the car park.

The conditions were terrible for football with one of the strongest winds I have played in.  It even affected attempts to play the game on the floor.  This clearly affected us more than Old Wilsonians as we were 2-0 down after half an hour.  At this point we decided to wake up and started to resemble a football team, and although we still weren’t great, at least we were in the game. This resulted in a long distance effort from Ryan Polley swerving and dipping past their keeper.  1-2 at half time.

We were the better team throughout the second half, having them pinned back in their half for long periods. Unfortunately one of their very rare breaks finished up in the net and we were 1-3 down.  We decided to go for broke, and went to a 3-4-3 formation, throwing Nigel on to make a nuisance of himself up front.  Towards the end this even went to 2-5-3.  The continued pressure told in the end with Andy Bitmead Jnr. pulling one back, and then Ryan Polley getting his second with only 2 mins left to earn a draw.

Although, we didn’t play that well, we battled hard and deserved our point.  Quite surprisingly, two of the better displays came from Ryan Polley and Nick Denny, although man of the match was probably Daniel Hewitt dictating things from centre half and then centre midfield when he stepped up in the second half.  Probably a good job he did, as I was having a bad game in the middle and would have had trouble trapping a bag of cement!!!

After two draws in two weeks we need a win next week, as we can still reach second place if we win our remaining 4 games.

Ben (Smiler) Doherty