Squad:

 
Lawrence
Jim
Colin
Rob
Grant
Kev
Les
George
Rich

After watching the youth team gain another impressive 3 points us old timers set about getting our first points and victory of the season. Conditions were near perfect as we began with some good possession. We moved the ball around the pitch well with some good passing and always seemed to have some one available as we kept our shape and communicated to push our opponents on to the back foot.

We finally got the breakthrough as Grant expertly scored his first goal for the Strollers after a nice assist from Kev. We then suffered a bad 5 minutes as we conceded twice; the first was through the dreaded 4 running offence rule. Lawrence just failed to get a hand to a well placed spot kick. The second came as it appeared that Rob had been fouled, alas no free kick as the Canterbury forward found the net with what has to be said was a very good strike.

So all of our hard work quickly undone, nevertheless we kept to the plan of keeping our shape, Colin, Rob and Grant were working in unison as we pressed to get back in the game, with Joycie and Les being a constant threat we weren’t behind for long. The aforementioned Mr Joyce getting his second assist of the game as Les equalised.

We then regained the lead as we were the beneficiaries of the away team falling foul of too many running offences. Les stepped up an emphatic kick that was never going to be stopped. So the half finished with us coming in with a deserved lead.

Quite remarkably that was the end of the scoring. We had plenty of chances keeping the ball but strive as we did we just couldn’t get the fourth or even fifth goal that we deserved, either narrowly missing or the away keeper somehow keeping us out. On the whole we defended well with only a couple of speculative long range efforts to trouble us. On the one occasion Canterbury did get through Lawrence was on hand to push the shot in to the air and so a dead ball was given even though it did eventually cross the line.

In the end a well deserved win. Thanks to everyone for supporting us especially Tony Old, Gordon and Ralph for their team management and also Chris Smith for another expertly refereed match.

On to Ashford away next which will be a tough trip not only because of the opposition, but we can go with renewed confidence and the knowledge that we have been successful there before.