By Stephen Abbot
East London 1st XI 3 v 0 Thurrock 1st XI
On a VERY cold Saturday, a diminished Thurrock team made there way across the M25 border to a stadium complex, the home of the only unbeaten side in division 3SE, East London.
The game started late due to a delayed umpire so one of the home side players had to step in and take control of the whistle.
The game started well for the home side who took control pretty much across the pitch especially down the centre where East London played their strongest players. About 10 minutes in, a lucky bouncing cross found its way to the East London forward who quite spectacularly managed to hit the ball in the air whilst running away from goal, on the reverse, which found the backboard. Thurrock didn’t let their heads go down however, and took more control after the stand-in captain Nick Stapleton made a tactical change and put 3 into the centre to strengthen the midfield. This worked well as East London were forced to attack down the wings which the Thurrock defence were more than equal to.
Thurrock even started to gain confidence and had a spell of attacking play which unfortunately came to nothing. A few near misses from Liam Birch and some decent play from Mike Hewing was all this amounted to.
The half time whistle went and the emphasis of the talk was to keep our shape and keep our heads up because we were only 1 goal down. This didn’t really happen!
The second half was a bit of a mess. East London were strong in attack and Thurrock were poor pretty much all over. Its safe to say that East London were just the better team on the day and deserved the win. Their second goal came mid way through the second half when their speedy centre midfielder made a run through the middle, reversed his stick and put the ball away to the right of the keepers foot. After the match Andy Gaut explained that a ghost or something ran across his mask which meant he couldn’t reach the shot.
East London’s final goal came in similar circumstances when their other centre midfielder found himself some space in the D after a nice run, smacked the ball hard and low, the ball deflected off a couple of sticks and up into the bulging net.
Man of the match this week went to the keeper Andy Gaut who made some outstanding saves between the sticks notably from short corners. Donkey went to Andre Rudder although he probably doesn’t know until he reads this bit because he left suddenly after the match. (I’ll let Rudders explain that one on Wednesday). A special thanks to Cass for coming to watch on a miserably cold day.
Onto next week when the return leg of the infamous Thurrock vs Southend takes place. Thurrock will be out to turn the tides from the last game. Come on you Tees!
