This week was a cup game against one of our archest of arch enemies Rusthall III and after a good few years without a win against them we knew it was time to finally get one under our belts especially after a couple of frustrating draws recently in the league. We welcomed Gozzy back into the starting 11 after his quest to El Spain to try and find a new species of minibeast and Thom Thumb (Nowell) made his first start after the inevitable emigration from Crowborough Athletic to the mighty Blackham manning the centre of the park with Huffers.
We started well and were patiently getting to grips with the horrible little scud patch of a pitch trying to get our passing game together with the limited space on offer. After a period of gradual pressure Bertie burst down the right and his cross come shot was spilt into the path of Hobbit who does what the Hobbit does best and beat the defender to the ball to bundle it over the line…1 – 0 Blackham. We continued to look positive after this and the second goal soon followed, I believe it was Hobbit who got the assist but I really can’t remember all I know is the ball ended up at the feet of Axel Cooper who kept his cool switching the ball onto his left foot and fired home to make the score 2 – 0 and keep up his good scoring form. Meaty took a knock and had to be replaced by Bayleywoggles but apart from that setback we went into half time playing well and feeling positive.
We continued our dominance in the second half and made the score 3 – 0 when their linesman seemed to decide to let Gozzy stand about 5 miles offside and lift the ball over the keeper probably as a result of raising his flag at everything in sight for the rest of the game so maybe he was just evening things up!! Maybe the generosity carried over to the Blackham boys as we allowed them to pull a goal back with a free header at the back post to make it 3 – 1. Big Nose had to go off with a knock which left Gozzy to prove himself as our very own Pepe Reina and proceeded to end up with a better clean sheet record than Nice Guy which is one for the quiz in 5 years time!! We went on to make it 4 – 1 with a nice half volley from Hobbit followed by a very composed (sliced) finish from Huffers to wrap the game up at 5 – 1.
I think its fair to say that this was easily the poorest Rusthall side we have ever faced but having said that we fought for every ball, kept our shape and passed the ball nicely so we can be pleased with the effort we put in today which is the main thing. I particularly enjoyed their porky number 9 who was as generous with the ball as his mum is with his roast dinners who seemed to enjoy passing the ball straight back to us from every kick off they had so maybe we could all chip in to buy him a cheese and bacon roll as a thank you present and also the Tonbridge League version of Wayne Routeledge on the wing who would have benefited from realizing that it’s not that useful running at 100 clicks per minute if you leave the ball 15 yards behind you!! In all honesty we could have had about 8 more goals with the amount of chances we missed…I wont name any names but I think one of them looked a little bit like Karel Poborsky….
Next week is sure to be a much tougher test against Eccles from the Maidstone League in the Kent Cup.
WE HATE RUSTHALL WE HATE RUSTHALL WE HATE RUSTHALL!!
Shaggy x
