Football Chiswick W4 London Another Two Points Dropped by Meads

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Another Two Points Dropped by Meads

Amateur Football Combination Premier Division - Old Meadonians 2 Bealonians 2

Old Meadonians tamely surrendered another two points at Riverside Lands on Saturday to bring their tally of score draws to four, out of six league games played so far.

The only slightly mitigating factor to a disastrous last ten minutes of the match was that they had hardly deserved the two goal lead they allowed to let slip, in the first place. Champions Bealonians have had the same edgy start to their season but from the outset looked the more likely of the two sides to put this behind them as they pegged Meads back, creating, or being allowed, three chances by their hosts’ lax marking, in the first fifteen minutes.

Before half time Meads, crucially without three key players, player coach Jack Costello, the speedy Peter Eguae and stalwart Dwayne Rhone, had added to their general lassitude another cardinal sin, that of turning off at set pieces. As a result, on a ‘create one, get one free’ basis, before half time, another four chances were placed on offer but fortunately the visitors spurned them to their eventual cost. There were just five minutes to go to the interval when Meads’ non-stop striker Ed Glover worked himself free on the left and his cross was headed in by marauding centre back Andy Thompson.

Notwithstanding this reversal, Beals continued to take the game to their hosts for the opening ten minutes of the second half, but instantly succumbed to a sucker punch as Glover, in a mauvish patch while coming back to his best form flicked a cross onto the bar and, with acute speed of thought tucked in the rebound.

This was the signal for Meads to reverse roles with the visitors and subject them to a similar torrid period of pressure, alas fruitless for the lack of anyone with killer instincts. However, it was Meads’ failure to close out the game conclusively which was to prove fatal. With barely ten minutes on the clock, they turned off while a free kick was being touched on forty yards out on their left flank. The immediate dribbling angled cross was ceremonially ushered through a neat corridor into the far corner of the net for an equaliser that was a tempting carrot for Beals. The visitors needed no second bidding and with the ref looking at his watch a superb twenty yards strike cannoned in off the far post to apportion the spoils fairly.

Team: C. Greening, Pointer, Thompson, Palmer, Graham, Thomkins, Jones, Gerrish, Jacobs, (Quinn), Glover, Hawkins.

October 21, 2009