LATEST MATCH REPORT: MENS 2ND XI

Mens 2nds VS

The jacaranda and buttercup juggernaut continued its unbeaten spell on Saturday, crushing the pink-bloused Pompey opposition and sending them scuttling back to their south-coast shithole with their tails between their legs. Yes, we dispatched City of Portsmouth a convincing 3-0.

Impressive stuff, considering that Wanderers didn't play particularly well. The omens were good, as we gathered at Fortress Kennington on a crisp, autumnal morn: Marc Rogers was reassuringly late after a Friday night bender; the rather dim umpires had to change shirts three times to avoid clashing with our strip; and Keith's dad and Ted swelled the spectator numbers to the dizzy heights of two. Game on.

Our pre-match psyching-out tactics paid off, as the visitors worried about their cars parked on SE11's lawless streets and shuddered at the complete lack of facilities at the 'new and improved' Kennington pitch. Portsmouth started slowly while Wanderers quickly found their pace, pinging the ball across the park with an unusually high degree of finesse.

The first half was spent largely attacking the oppo?s dee at the Black Sheep end. Some slick moves down the middle created sharp one-twos, and led to our first score. Thief wasn?t playing this week, but Tom Ohta nabbed the goal from Marc at the last minute, taking Wanderers ahead 1-0 at the interval.

The halves played especially well in the first half, commanding the centre of the park and stringing together some blinding runs, especially newcomers James and Dom, who sparked several explosive runs through the opposition defence. Graham up front, too, showed his electric pace to set up a couple of tasty chances we failed to put away.

Things were tight and shipshape at the back, with the dam-like defences of the Falla twins, Tim, Spraggy and Paddy proving solid ? and knocking it around with some pace this week.

After the interval and a stirring Falla team chat about doing it for Britain on Remembrance Day, we sadly failed to dominate the second half. We lost our composure on the ball and allowed Portsmouth to launch numerous attacks on our dee. They still looked quite gay in their pink shirts, though.

However, all was not lost and we ended up slotting a pair in the second spell. Seb slammed in the second goal, while a James-Sean one-two allowed James to beat the keeper for the third. A marvellous result, considering.

Other highlights? Well, Graham ran into a 14-year-old and complained that he'd pulled his hammy as a result. This was not a one-off; the Pompey team was peopled by midgets, some of whom were born in 1992. Seriously. Marc played with real gusto on both flanks and Sean made a welcome return with some strong play in the middle.

Seb won a convincing dick of the day vote by failing to slot the sort of sitter of which Manchester indie popsmiths James would have been proud. 'It was harder not to score' was the general conclusion.

Low scoring and a split vote indicated that no one player stood out as man of the match: guest keeper Ben (who wasn't too troubled but made some important saves to keep our first clean sheet), new dad Tim (who largely contained some probing runs from their physical forwards) and Tom (making a strong return after a spell of injury).

Seb won the drink-off in a decent (but not record-threatening) time, followed by Tim, who accelerated from 0-586ml in 6.4 seconds. Amusingly, Graham sank Snakey B for the third week on the trot, as he had one in the bank. You might almost think some team members had it in for him.

So, a decent 3-0 victory. Teams that win when they play poorly are teams that prosper. We just need to raise our game for a tougher game next week, when we?re playing Surbiton for third place.

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