Our next game after a tough battle against Petts Wood is against Thamesmead FC. On the back of our second win in a row, we hoped to carry on with this form into this game. As we started, we could immediately see what their plan was. Pump it long and go straight from defence to attack. And they took only less than 5 minutes to score as they went long, won the second ball and volleyed in from about 25 yards out for the opener. But luckily for us that lead was extremely short lived, as the ball bounced in the box and their centre half tried to clear it yet lobbed his own keeper to give us our equalizer. We then soon doubled our lead as some nice football left Danny in a 1-on-1 with the keeper, which he tucked away to give us a 2-1 lead, all this happening in roughly 15 minutes. But unfortunately, our lead was also short lived. As a long ball from their keeper went over our midfield and through to their striker for their equalizer. However, the game was far from done, as Matt set Osi away for our 3rd of the game and restored our lead. But we were far from finished, as a long ball from us found its way through to Harley after some failed clearances from their defenders, and then our lead was doubled and our 4th in just about 40 minutes. The half ended and even though we were winning, our shape was a bit of a mess, which we needed to improve in the second half to make sure they didn’t get back into it.

As the second half got under way, the game was a lot less end to end. They had chances to score and so did we, but unfortunately none were taken. Until about 70 minutes in, when a quick through from Tedd found Daniel whose cross/shot lobbed the keeper to give us a 3 goal lead and our 5th of the game. That proved to be the last goal-scoring action of a game that had been a game of 2 halves. Overall, a decent performance, but we know what we can improve on.

Match report by Ciaran Larkin.