County Town 5 v 0 Pembury Sunday Res
The Kent Cup is always a chance to get away from league action and perhaps give some players who haven't been starting many games a chance to show what they can do. This was just how it turned out ,as during the week we lost 7 of our regular first 11 to injury or absence which stretched the squad to the limits.
By the time we arrived in Maidstone we had 10 fit, or fittish people to choose from. With this in mind, and the fact that we didn't have one recognised striker in the squad we played a 4-4-1 formation with Robert as the lone man up top.
With the personnel we had available we knew that we would be giving up a lot of possession, but wanted o stay as tight as possible in two lines of four, to make it as difficult as possible for them to break us down. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way as after 10 minutes they broke the deadlock which knocked a bit of the stuffing out of us.
Matt Jermin then injured his knee and was barely able to run, but battled on and made himself another body to get past.
They scored two more before half-time and we could really have wilted in the second half but, thanks in main to a strong half-time team talk from Skipper Shawn Bent we went out in the second half with renewed enthusiasm. Everybody worked really hard in the unfortunate strong October heat and we kept the score to 3-0 until the last 10 minutes when the pressure they had eventually told, and they scored 2 more to finish the game 5-0 winners.
I'd like to thank all 10 people players for all their efforts on Sunday and I just hope that we get better availability from the rest of the squad as the season progresses.
And special thanks to Mark, Olly's dad for running the line for us, without which we would have picked up a club fine.
Team:
S.Balcombe
M.Files
O.Bryant
T.Lowe
Matt Jermin
L.Drury
Shawn Bent
N.Forward
James Roxborough
R.Curd
