Goal; Rose
So as the start of another season approaches the anticipation of who will actually manage to make it to parking friendly Bounds Green station begins to build . As a precaution I managed to convince Brough the younger to come along . Just as well as that gave us 11 players .
The Hill were taking the match slightly more seriously and in the spirit of the new squad rules introduced by the premiership had turned up with 25 players . They thought it might be good to change the whole team at half time . Well it must be tiring for those 18 and 19 year olds to have to run about for the whole 90 minutes .
So onto the game and despite the slight difference in speed we were well organised and a sweeping move started by Brough the younger at left back saw it flicked on by Burwell into the path of Rose to put us one up . We would have asked the time of the goal but the ref didn’t have a watch . We welcomed Steve Edelman in goal and he pulled off a couple of good saves to keep us ahead .
Pressure was mounting and a world class finish from their very nippy winger and a debatable off side goal (ref had no glasses either ) saw us get to half time 2-1 down . Winchmore Hill then changed the whole team , including the ref ( still no watch though ) . They were now kicking down the hill and it was 45 minutes of constant attack , as they poured through a midfield who were struggling with fitness and descended on the back 4 I was reminded of the scene from the film Zulu when the Corporal turns to Caine and says ” Zulu’s to the East Sir ” , Caine replies , “how many ” , to which the Corporal says ” thousands of ’em ” . Now I accept that might be a bit of an exaggeration but it did seem they had the whole squad on the pitch at times .
The defence fought to the end and with some last ditch defending and top goalkeeping we only let them score 4 in the second half . As the whistle went there were some very tired legs but we can take some positives out of the game , when we got the ball down and passed it we held our own against a team from a higher league . We had joint men of the match in our goalie Steve Edelman and Elliott Brough ( he asked me to say that )
