Newsletter w/c 01.11.21

Fixtures for Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th November

Selection

Match Reports

Fitzwilliam 3 – 2 Old Meadonians

Off the back of some disappointing results the boys looked to set things right, away at Fitzwilliam OB. The warm up was good and the mood bright as we looked to steer the ship back on course. The boys started well, passing the ball around and progressing it nicely, and for the first time in a few games the chances were coming, with their keeper making a couple good saves to keep them level. The game then began to open up and chances appeared at both ends before Fitzwilliams managed to convert one, a good headed goal, to put them ahead. 

Half time came and went and we continued to look decent, but it was then that the curse of the commentator kicked in and Fitzwilliams bundled home a Jammy 2nd goal after about 3 saves from Tim on the line. 2-0 down and about 30 mins left things looked bleak, the bench was filling up with injuries leaving us stretched but the work rate never lowered, with the boys showing real fight. Then up the wing came Fishman who whipped in a cross/ played a through ball to Xav who slotted home giving us a life line. 

It was at this point the referee decided to start letting their defenders kick me without ever being penalised, before with the aid of Charlie’s sideline shouts and my own consistent complaining out came the dreaded yellow card, leading to me being sin binned and leaving the team in a nasty situation with 15 mins left and down to 10 men, earning me a very fair WIG. 

The 10 men on the field however, continued to show real character and put the oppo under a lot of pressure before finally a little space opened for Mark on the edge of the box where produced an absolute wonder strike to draw us level! However, sadly this is not a fairytale ending as shorty after these great scenes Fitzwilliams bundled home another bouncing ball in the box to leave us in a sadly all to familiar situation of being on the wrong side of the score line. 

But we win, lose and grind as a team and we will come back stronger and taste victory again soon, next weeks cup fixture the ideal opportunity.

WIG – Toby Stroud-Turp

MOM – None (not doing MOM when we lose anymore)

Report by Toby Stroud-Turp

Old Meadonians 2s 3-2 Clapham Old Xaverians
MOTM Dan Stewart
WIG Kenna

It was Halloween and after a Nightmare on Sutton High St in the cup last week, the 2s were looking to bounce back in the league where they’d started well.

We welcomed Clapham Old Xaverians to Fortress Pavilion and started strongly as we have done often this season. Unfortunately, we followed our usual trend of not putting away our chance and could have easily been 3 up, with K9/10 culpable of the worst miss when he somehow failed to divert Phil’s ball across from 1 yard.

As expected after so much pressure, we conceded from a speculative effort that took a cruel deflection, which Dean “The Cat” Stacey could do nothing to stop on his return to the side at age of 56.

We kept pushing on however and won a penalty after good work from Phil and Ali down the right. K9, usually so prolific from the spot (his only source of goals since 2019), fired wide to the dismay of himself and his teammates.

The barrage on goal continued, with it becoming a joke that we hadn’t scored. Eventually we broke the deadline when fan favourite Joe “Ryan Giggs” Yates bundled home at the back post, showing the goal threat of Ben Chilwell from his LWB position. 1-1 half time.

The second half continued much like the first, with OMFC banging on the door but being denied by poor finishing/good goalkeeping.

A blatant handball in the box was ignored to the fury of Bombaleo Stewart, who received a sin bin for his complaints. The game came to a head with 10 minutes to go, with new signing Oskar being pushed into a flying Dean Stacy at a set piece and (unsurprisingly) coming off worse.

The Cat came out of it with his signature head gash, which was quickly patched up by Rampage Ronald in true Terry Butcher fashion, but poor Oskar needed a trip to A&E (ok now thankfully).

What followed was ridiculous – the ref bizarrely gave a drop ball to the oppo and didn’t indicate when we were due to play. In the melee, Clapham ended up slotting past Deano into an unguarded net. A truly unfair turn of events, but this game was far from over…

The injustice kicked us into another gear as we equalised almost straight away. Their keeper (who had been on fire all day), failed to deal with a speculative 30 yard drive from the excellent Karim which nestled into the corner. 2-2.

Meads were baying for blood now and with 5 minutes to go our pressure was finally too much. K9 spun their 5ft4 left back from a throw in and pulled it across goal to Ally G. His first shot was blocked but his second flew in off the bar, cueing wild celebrations from all in maroon.

Some stellar game management saw the last 5 minutes of the game out as the 2s go marching on!

Report by Ed McKenna

Thorntonians 3 – 0 Old Meadonians III

The Wildcats elated after a 4-0 victory against the Birmingham pub team in the cup felt like this was a kick-start we needed to get back on track. This atmosphere was felt by most of the wildcats pre-game with the most offered lift pickups from East Putney station being offered in meadonians history. Shout out to Rob who drove two minutes from the ground to the Tube station – despite the five other cars in attendance.

However, the ability to actually get into the cars was questionable and probably sums up the afternoon with an inability to decide what cars to get into and one person (who shall not be named) sitting at the wrong station asking where people are.

The wildcats promptly arrived at the ground and were keen to get in and repeat our 2-0 victory against Old Thorns. This of course is not including the inevitable I’m running late text from Marlon saying he would arrive at 1210.

The wildcats could then be forgiven for wondering if Marlon and the ref were sharing an Uber when it got close to 1230 and there was no sign of either. Albeit come the stroke of kick off, the ref was actually present…..

A solid first 25 minutes with chances for fresh on form Kody to score, with some shots from Will Chadwick and Ollie – the Wildcats looked almost certain to take the lead before the half. A (tactical?) Substitution took Kody off and brought on a fresh striker to see if we can break the deadlock to no avail with the Wildcats going into the half 0-0, with the almost prophetic why aren’t we 3 goals up half time team talk from Captain Clemo. Thorns had been kept to only one half chance all half which was well saved by Rorke and their “star winger” getting shouted at for losing the ball 15x in a row.

Come second half the Wildcats decided that we clearly had it too easy and started diving in to every challenge making their players look like Grealish with all the petty free kicks and theatrical dives. One such free kick just outside of the middle left hand side of the 18 yard box saw Mr ‘Star Winger’ step up. Unfortunately for the freshly on Marlon, the winger decided to aim for his face in the wall, which looked to be going wide, until Marlon partially ducked out the way and punched the ball into the far corner of the net. Not even the best own goal we’ve seen this season. 1-0 Thorns

The Heads of the Wildcats went down and not 10 minutes later their ‘star winger’ got played in about 8 yards offside, in front of the ref, messed up his touch making it recoverable for Either Rorke or Liam to gather / clear. What actually happened was both ending up on the floor and their player wondering why he isn’t being called up to Newcastle for a 500k a week contract. 2-0 Thorns

Not long left to go and the Wildcats had clearly given up at this point. Thorns CB once again has knocked a ball over the top down the right hand side of the pitch, to which we were somehow completely caught out with nobody defending. An easy cross to the back post where their player took a touch and easily slotted it into the corner of the net. 3-0 Thorns.

A disappointing result where the Wildcats believed we would get a win to finally kick off the season. Onto the next game in the cup and back to football manager for Captain Clemo

MOTM: Sam Harwood for the work rate in the middle of the park

WIG: Marlon… for being Marlon

Report by Rorke Minors

OMFC 4s 2 – 2 Wandsworth Borough 3s

What had promised to be a wet Saturday afternoon turned into a day of near-perfect football conditions; however, that didn’t stop Jack H getting lost and turning up at The Pavilion 4 hours early for post-game drinks. That, coupled with an extremely harsh early foul throw decision, earned him the title of WIG.

The game started on an even footing with both teams building up possession and creating some half chances. The Falcons thought they’d broken the deadlock when Matty slipped in Casey McGuinness, who provided a cool finish, but an offside call ruled the goal out, sparking calls for VAR in the next fixture, or maybe just someone running the line…

Backed up by some solid defending, the Falcons did eventually make the breakthrough, coming by way of a textbook one-on-one finish from Casey and some not-so-textbook goalkeeping. The Falcons managed to preserve their one goal lead until half time, with a couple of clearances off the line and good saves from Ali towards the end of the half.  

The second half started with Borough seeing more of the ball and piling the pressure on, but Matty’s fine strike across the goalkeeper and into the far corner from the edge of the box, which certainly helped with his award of MoM, took the Falcons into a two goal lead with just over half an hour to go.

Despite some free kicks in decent positions around Borough’s 18 yard box, Falcons were unable to further build on their lead and were punished from a Borough corner; the header coming down off the crossbar and bouncing over the line.

The 11 men of the Falcons battled on deep into the last 10 minutes, but were not able to prevent a late equaliser from Borough, coming after some confusion around a throw-in decision.

The late pressure of the final few minutes was soaked up, with the game finishing 2-2 and the Falcons earning a hard fought point which, given the position they’d found themselves in earlier in the game, felt like two points dropped.

There were plenty of positives to take from the game, including a solid foundation at the back and some very good goalkeeping from Ali, as well as some moments of brilliance further up the pitch, which the Falcons will look to take into their next game.

Up the Falcons!!

Report written by Jack Harris.MoM: Matthew AllenWIG: Jack HarrisSquad: Ali Basma, Jack Harris, James Wallace, Dom Stables, Jack Stansfield, Matthew Allen, Casey McGuinness, Stephan Spiekman, Andriy Tabas, Younis Gtaibi, Jose Da Cruz

Report by Steve Villard

OMFC 5s 3 – 0 Wandsworth Borough 4s (Bayliss-Allen, Stichbury, Masebo)

On Halloween Eve Meads 5s were looking to exorcise the ghosts of a narrow cup defeat the week before.

We had a strong squad of 13, albeit with a couple not due until around kick off time. The first half was a fairly even affair with chances for both sides – Tristan saving us a from a couple of frights after some slightly suspicious defending. We took the lead midway through the half – a cross into the box from a corner wasn’t cleared properly and Will Bayliss-Allen turned and buried the ball into the bottom corner.

Second half we survived a few more scares shortly after the break, but eventually the opposition tired and we took control of the game. We won a penalty after Guivin was pulled down when through on goal. After a brief delay for a very polite chit chat about who would like the penalty, Stich stepped up and smashed the ball into the corner – 2-0 Meads.

Great work from Stich on the right then set up Guivin to smash in the third from close range.

We had several more chances both before and after that and but for a few strange decisions in the opposition box could and should have scored a few more.

Good all round team performance and a great way to bounce back from the previous week’s disappointment.

MOM was split between Harrison and Stich who both had very good games, causing the oppo a lot of problems all afternoon.

Team: Evans, Golbourne, Gates, Tanner, Whelan, Moghadam, Bayliss-Allen, Jackson, Bridle, Stichbury, Marks, Masebo, Hackshaw

Report by Tim Gates

OMFC6 VS DRK6

Home game against Dorking, weather is fairly mild, pitch is a little muddy and there are puddles!!

We start with an untried formation but ultimately found it gave the oppo far too much freedom in certain areas of the field.

Chance after chance kept going off target, Dorking then hit the bar and had a series of shots which the required Alex to be on his A-Game.

We ended the first half 1-0 ahead which settled a few nerves.

Second half we exposed their defence more and ran them ragged, their fitness levels weren’t anywhere near the same level as ours and ultimately it showed.

Final Score 4-0

MOM: Alex

DOD: Jacob

Report by David Acland

Old Meads 7s – No report received

OMFC 8s L 8-3

Goals – Alex M (debut), Rob K, Paolo

Another week another cup game, turning up to Woking as the underdogs, playing a team in the league above and away was always going to be a challenge, especially when the GK doesn’t show… poor form from Tom who is more of a ghost than Harry Kane at the moment.

Meads started by playing into the sun with Andrei between the sticks. For 25 minutes we kept Woking at bay, but positioning was lacking and Woking kept pressing well. A Woking player didn’t read the slippery surface warning sign put out by Andrei in the box, fell over and was immediately awarded a penalty for breaking a nail. Goal Woking. A few sloppy goals later we were 5-0 down at half time. A few serious words of encouragement from the skipper, the sun behind us and some changes in positioning, we plugged the gaps, started to link up well and played some good attacking football.

Firing back with the first goal for Meads was Alex with a debut goal, a half volley from the edge of the box driven low and hard into the bottom left corner! The second goal came from “the big man” Rob, coming into the Woking box from CB, catching the GK unawares, a right place right time tap in. The third goal, came from Paolo with the Woking keeper about to take a goal kick out of this hands, suddenly tried to catch a fly and dropped the ball at Paolo’s feet who calmly passed the ball into the net. Goal Meads and the fly got away.

Annoyingly a few more goals went in for Woking but we ended the second half with 3 goals in each. A much more even half.

Credit this week to Andrei and Max for going in goal last minute, some great dribbling and passing in the midfield during the second half and a shout out to Talha for some superb threatening runs of play down the right wing but MoM goes to Rob this week for multiple solid clearances, bagging some meat and washing the kit.

Report by Ben Lane

Old Meads Sat Vets – No report received