Guildford (A)
Tooting fair sauntered to victory in the wind in Guildford. A nice Conor Melody finish and a well-placed Shay pen had us two up before the break and we never looked back.
If you haven’t been to the Guildford Spectrum Leisure CentreI highly recommend it. Unless you want to watch football. With a running track and various athletic paraphernalia scattered about the place, football was obviously an afterthought. The one seated area provides a decent raised view of the football if you avoid the pillars and the floodlight pylons. Sadly the pitch is in a different postcode from the stand. The lavender army tried the view behind the goal second half. It was at the top of a steep bank at the first bend. One more hurricane gust and we could have lost Tim to the hammer throwing cage forever.
On the pitch Tooting bossed the game. Guildford put in a performance as bad as anything we’ve seen this season (except a couple of Tooting ones). Shay ran the defence ragged and we created numerous chances. Most of Guildford’s passes were either out of play or straight to a Tooting player. To be fair the pitch was rough and the wind worse, which turned the match into a poor game of Blow Football (a reference for our older readers there).
Conor had missed a couple before his sweetly hit opener. Johnny Okoto made a lung busting run which ended with the unfortunate full back sliding the ball out of play off his trailing arm. Not sure what the lad was supposed to do beyond amputating his arm, but in the rules of the game he stopped the cross with his arm = handball = penalty. The referee was unusually competent. He seemed to know the rules and controlled the game. He’ll not last five minutes in the CoCo Prem.
Mario went off injured in the first half. Looked like he’d been targeted from the start and defenders went through the back of him on a few occasions. Maybe his recent disciplinary record is making teams feel he is get-at-able? His replacement was young William Caulton. I suppose he’s young – I haven’t done any research on him but he looks about 14. Normally we see young players who are either tall, fast or strong. He doesn’t immediately look any of these so I am optimistic he has talent instead. Hope he gets some more game time before the end of the season. He deserved a goal and nearly got one late on.
Guildford had the best of the wind in the second half and created plenty of good chances. One penalty area melee seemed to go on for half an hour until we hacked it clear. It might have been a goalmouth scramble, it could have been a medieval battle reenactment. From our distance we simply couldn’t tell. Jack made at least one fine save and was enjoying kicking long into the wind.
Good to bring the losing run to an end.
Looks like we’ll be playing Guildford again next season. Bring your binoculars.
📸 by John Dellafera
