Squad:

Lawrence
Paul
Colin
Rob
Will
Les
George
Nigel
Tony O
Gordon
Jim

At the end of the day you can’t really argue about the result, Herne Bay are a very good walking football club and at one time probably the best around, all their age groups are competitive and well organised. The 65s are no different and have a couple of players that have been playing together since mud baths of pitches, comb overs and black football boots. The plastic pitch we played on last night is wonderful to play on, comb overs have been replaced by a more slick appearance and as for the footwear, black still seems thankfully to dominate just as Trevor and Harry for our hosts did last night.

We began really quite brightly, dominating possession and making a couple of half chances, as time progressed the match became a lot more even as both teams pushed for the all important opener. The home team were working us hard with a combination of movement and interchanging of short passes, twice we were undone and space was manipulated, on both occasions clinical finishing meant we closed the first period two goals down.

A couple of changes at half time saw Nigel and Tony come on for Will and Paul, unfortunately we quickly conceded a third leaving us an absolute mountain to climb. Rather than start to feel sorry for ourselves we stuck at it, it could easily have become a bit of a rout but thankfully we are made of better stuff than that and proceeded to battle ourselves back in to the contest, although Les’s goal came just a little too late to impact on the result we can take a lot of pride for the way we went about the final fifteen minutes. George and Les combined well as usual with Colin tenacious as ever, the quality of the opposing midfield meant Rob had to be more defensive than we would have liked and Lawrence was given no chance with any of the goals we conceded.

We can with a little discipline learn from this defeat, ideally the lesson handed out would be practiced but with no dedicated training sessions for the 60s or 65s at the moment we will have to do this in competitive matches. Better movement with and without the ball for a starter and progress from there, one thing that can’t be faulted was the team spirit, another good plus was a marked improvement on the concessions of running offences, although this could in some ways be the interpretation of the match official.

Thanks to Gordon for the warm up routine and support, Herne Bay for there hospitality, Frankie for fair and impartial refereeing and to each and every member of the match day squad.