As many of you will know, we had pulled out of the Kent League last season, as it was felt the games were not being played in the right spirit and had become too aggressive and competitive.

A proposal was made by several teams in Kent for the league to be reinstated this year, and canvassing opinions among BayCity members it appeared that a number of people were keen to join a newly formed league.

A meeting was held at Herne Bay in August, and from this emerged 6 teams keen to participate:-

BayCity Strollers, Herne Bay, Dover, Ebbsfleet, Kings Hill and Margate.

With games played home and away there are accordingly with 6 teams, 10 games in total in the season. Teams are 6 a side, excepting at BayPoint where, with our bigger pitch, they can go up to 7 a side.

Currently we have 15 players registered to play, which I suppose is roughly half of the BayCity membership.

We started the season on top of the league ……. Well, alphabetically anyway! Our first match 12^th October however was at home to Herne Bay, who include some ex Herne Bay FC semi-professional players, and that combined with a not very good performance from ourselves resulted in an 11-0 defeat!

The second match on 4^th November was away at Dover (who play at Aylesham). We took a first half lead and Dover looked a bit rattled. We could have gone further ahead. However they pulled one back, and then got another just before half time. In the second half they had a player sent off for a studs-up tackle on Kevin, but we were unable to capitalise on the extra man advantage. After 5 minutes, by the rules, Dover were able to bring on a replacement player, and subsequently scored a further two goals, giving them a far more comfortable looking win than it actually was.

Next up we were at home to Ebbsfleet on 9th November. A fairly new team, and they had some problems defending on our large pitch at BayPoint. The final score was 5-1 to BayCity ……… our first points!

The most recent game was away at Margate on 29^th November. The pitch there is quite small and playing 6 a side, there is very little time on the ball. However we played some good football in the first half and peppered the Margate goal …… only to find their keeper was in inspired form. Against the run of play Margate scored, but Martin managed to equalise for us before half time.

Margate scored again early in the second half, and then another from a deflected shot! Rob pulled one back with a hard low shot, and in the last minute a terrible Margate back pass from a free kick left Kevin unmarked in front of goal …… but he shot over.

So we lost 3-2, and were left wondering how we had failed to get at least a point!   

As you will gather from the above we are not top of the league! However all the games have been played in a good spirit, and without the previous aggression.

We might not win the league, but we can still enjoy playing competitively and pitting our wits and skills (?) against other teams and players we do not regularly play against.

There are still 6 matches to go this season, so hopefully our luck might turn and we can pick up a few wins……….

Chris Le Corney