Kew Association 0 - 0 Old Parks (Southern Amateur League)

Logic Problem: 3-3-1, 4-3-1, 4-4-2, 4-4-1???????????

Being quite a nice area of London and being my first visit to Kew, I envisioned turning up to palatial grounds with Butler service in the changing rooms and a Swedish masseuse on hand to get into all those nooks and crannies. How disappointed I was then, to have my dream shattered and arrive at what can only be described as a cow shed with an associated seating area.

The good thing was that the 8 of us that decided to travel by train arrived about an hour early. The three that decided to travel by car did not bank on vast amount of traffic coming to Kew to watch our game!

News from Tony E indicated a 10 minute delay, whilst news from the Cookie/Two Tone car sounded more like they had popped into MFI at Brent Cross to pick up some more paint for Toot’s house and were now stuck on the North Circ with the rest of the shoppers.

Anyway, the game kicked off with an inspired 3-3-1 formation. After 10 minutes, Tony E arrived and we automatically reverted to our more comfortable 4-3-1 formation. Kew pressed us in the first half without really creating much. We used our pre-match tactics of kicking the ball over the nearby bushes and railway line as many times as possible to stop the ref’s watch. We did manage to get out of our half a few times and even managed to get a corner. Sharkey had the upper hand against their No 4, but the No 6 and No 8 dominated him though. I expect more from Sharkey in these situations. Constantly losing the ball against 4 players just isn’t good enough for the 1st team.

We get to half time with the score still at 0-0 and Ali still without a real save to make. News from the cookiemobile said that they were at Riverside Green, but at the Civil Service Ground instead of the Kew ground. Oh well start the car again.

As we went back out for the second half, the wind switched direction again and now we had to play into it for the second half running. Everyone dug in and made a real solid effort. Although Kew were coming at us, we managed to keep them at bay. After 60 minutes, Cookie and Toot’s arrived and we had a full quota of players. What to do with extra players – well 4-4-2 we went. However, 11 players didn’t last long as my hamstring went after 75 minutes and we were back to ten men 4-4-1.

In the last ten minutes we really had our backs to the walls, with Ali making a couple of great saves in the last 5 minutes, and Dave Jones making a couple of timely interceptions. It finished 0-0 without us having a shot on target, but also without them looking too dangerous. Who knows what we could do with 7 men???

Man of the Match: M Sharkey v the Kew Midfield has to take it
Team: Maccullum, Evendon, D Jones, Raven, Etherington, Cook, A Jackson, M Sharkey, Collins, S Chudley, Knapman

Report by Jon Raven