A cold, wet, encounter on a bog of a pitch was finally edged in the Lions favour by a goal as scrappy as the rest of the game. As the poor weather over the weekend inevitably took out Epsom Albion's home pitch at Weston Green, this became our game in hand and the win means we've now reached the dizzying heights at the top of Division 2.
The day didn't start too well as we had trouble working out where the pitch and changing rooms were. The Nescot site is so big that that it has multiple post codes and most of us ended up parking in one area and having to be directed to the (one) changing room in another part.
The pitch when we eventually got to it, was boggy to begin with and it deteriorated quickly from kick off. Everybody found it hard going trying to pass, run, turn and shoot, especially in the centre circle where not a blade of grass was to be seen. Not surprisingly the quality of play suffered and nothing much happened for the first half hour or so. We probably edged it on possession and goal threat, but that isn't saying much.
With the temperature struggling above freezing and sleet starting to fall, the deadlock was broken via an excellent first time cross-field pass from Bache on the right that scythed through the Cheam defence and found its way to Max coming into the area from the left. His low early shot caught the the goalie out at his near post to put us one up on Cheam.
That lead lasted barely a couple of minutes as we gifted Cheam an immediate equaliser. A horribly ill-advised pass across the face of our own penalty area from Mike, ended up as a perfect assist for their striker to place a shot into the left-hand corner, scoring with Cheam's only shot on target in the half.
We had further opportunities in that first half but after perhaps being at fault for the goal, their keeper transformed into David bloody De Gea for the rest of the game. He got across well to punch a Harry free-kick over the bar, then from the resulting corner did even better to bat away a close range shot. He made further saves at his near post as we applied pressure before half time and with Cheam not offering anything at the other end (thanks to some excellent defensive work, particularly by Ed), we went into the break all square.
Nath was too busy working out what to do with all his subs to give much of a team talk, so it was pretty much carry on as you were for the start of the second half. We did chalk up a notable first for the Lions by subbing an actual goalkeeper with another actual goalkeeper for the second half because...well, because we could.
Don't remember much going on before the big incident that almost got the match abandoned. Since there is an ongoing Surrey FA investigation into this, won't go into that much detail about it.
Bache put a tackle on their winger near the touchline closest to us on the sidelines. The ball clearly came off the Cheam player last as it went out for a throw, something that both the lino (yours truly) and the ref saw, so naturally it was given as a Lions throw. Their player wasn't having it and got a bit upset and verbal towards the ref, who showed him red straight away. What followed was enough to cause the ref to walk off the pitch, grab his kit bag and announce that he was abandoning the match.
After a few minutes of discussion with just myself and the Cheam Rovers sec, the ref changed his mind, much to the relief of all involved as the last thing anyone wanted was to have played in the freezing cold and rain for nothing.
With that little drama over, we got back to playing as much football could be had on pitch that was now cut up everywhere. Attempts at shooting and passing were getting comical and running was heavy going. We figured the ten men would tire quickly, but their keeper was still pulling off save after save to keep them in it. One of our corners caused a massive scramble on the goal line when it seemed impossible not to score but a combination of blocks by keeper and defenders and the sheer muddiness of the goal area kept the ball from crossing that line.
Rob had a couple of shots from distance over the bar, Ben tried unsuccessfully to repeat his free-kick magic from the previous week, Max and Harry had pops, all to no avail. In the end it was that man Nelson again, who popped up with the goods.
Nelson - who turned up hung-over near half time, and whose main contributions once he came on in the second half were to lose possession with ill-judged back-heels, foul defenders or managing to combine the two for what must surely be a world first of fouling someone whilst doing a back-heel - was nevertheless in the right place at the right time to steer Rob's flicked header from Harry's corner over the goal-line for the winner. He admitted later that it just went in off his knees, but such is his season that even when he's not at his best, he can still come up with the goal that matters.
Gary almost got on the scoresheet in spectacular fashion with a proper bicycle kick from outside the area that was on target but straight at the keeper. He was replaced by Kieran making a welcome return to action after being injured in the season's second game. We couldn't add to our goal tally and Cheam rallied to give us a late scare, but on an awful day to be playing football, we prevailed to take all three points.
Another win against our near rivals and the kind to really take heart from. Grinding out a result like this is more satisfying than smashing teams further down the table. More importantly it puts us level on games with Epsom Albion but on top of the table by two points. And we have pretty, nice round numbers next to our name to look at too...They won't stay like that (hence the pic added for posterity) but we can control whether we're still number 1 at the end of the season.
