By Chris Chilton
Well, it had to happen eventually. After a golden run of flowing football and good form the boys were due for an off day. This was it.
Perhaps we can lay some of the blame on the lack of the traditional bottle of halftime port _ a hideous oversight by vice-captain in absentia Stu “Beckenbauer” Oldham.
Playing against a veteran side with a lot of skills and no shortage of confidence, Wad’s Warriors spent most of the first half chasing the pill in their own half.
With wave after wave of Southend attacks coming in it looked only a matter of time before the defence leaked but keeper Jamie “The Bank” Fletcher kept Park well in the hunt with a string of brilliant saves.
Eventually Southend got one through but Park still looked in the game, despite lacking the cohesion and touch passing accuracy shown in previous weeks. In fact, this was a day of miskicks, with just about everyone in a yellow shirt guilty of at least one unco flykick.
Tireless midfielder “Dangerous” Dom Yuen went down in a sickening head clash with one of the Southend players and came up covered in blood from a deep gash through his right eyebrow. Dr Anil selflessly took one for the team and whisked him off to A&E to jump the Saturday afternoon sports injury queue. Dom made it back to Sandy Point with a few stitches in his head.
Spurred on by the sight of about half a litre of blood, Park launched its most telling attack of the half and from a goalmouth scramble Pete “the Postman” Driver delivered a deflection past the keeper and Park went into the hutch 1-all.
No port!
Again, the second half lacked cohesion but there were some moments of lovely football, especially when Lindsay “Barnie” Barnett came on. Chris “CP” Pearson briefly moved from striker to the back to allow “Jet” Li to make his long-awaited comeback, but pushed forward again as Southend scored four unanswered goals. Good call. It set up Park for its play of the week.
It came late in the piece. Ian “Biggun” Edwards laid on a beautiful pass from centrefield to “Barnie” around halfway on the right wing. Barnie spotted a gap to his left upfield and put the ball on the spot for CP to drill it from 20-plus metres hard into the back of the net. Result!
5-2 was a fair reflection of the run of play and but for some brilliant saves by “The Bank”‘ Fletcher and gutsy one-on-one defence from Matt “Mutilator” Tongue at left fullback it could have been worse. Much worse.
Still, it shows that even on an off day this QP side is capable of some bloody good footie. The team has come a long way since the ritual 17-nil floggings we used to take back in the day.
AS EVER – go to this address for photos of this match: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29124609720
