Thamesmead Town 1 Ashford Town 2

Saturday 8 August 2009
Pre-season friendly
Thamesmead Town 1 Ashford Town 2
By Mead reporter Steve Brown

Despite dominating, The Mead eventually lost out in their final pre-season friendly, 2-1 to Ashford Town.

The Mead started with five positional changes and four new faces from the midweek 3-0 victory against Fisher. 

Woodward started in goal and Campbell returned to the back three, with Brown being moved into the mid-field to replace Dawson. Gabrial Momodu played up front and Burgess got a start in midfield replacing Cant.

From the start, Thamesmead had the majority of possession, with Ashford being content to cede ground and look to counter quickly.  On a perfect, though maybe hard pitch, both sides gave the ball away cheaply and both were unable to create flowing football. 

Ashford took the lead on twelve minutes, forcing a corner from a long punt up-field where the ball was converted at the near post by ex-Mead player Nick Smith, with the Mead defence in somewhat of a muddle.

Thamesmead appeared unaffected and continued to have the majority of the ball and played mainly in the Ashford half.  Ashford’s next attack came on provided their second goal in similar circumstances to the first on twenty one minutes, Nick Smith again nodding the ball home at the near post, making the most of the confusion that seemed to be in the defending of such a corner.

The pattern remained the same for the rest of the half, with Constable, Mamodu, Mulholland and Burgess all having chances but all failing to put any real shot on the keeper. 

Ashford’s defending was primitive to say the least, with the referee seemingly reluctant to penalize them.  On 39 minutes, after playing an advantage as Mead’s Mulholland was fouled outside the area, Constable was then pulled down inside the box as he was about to shoot and the referee awarded a foul but for the original foul outside the box! 

Mead started the second half replacing Brown and Burgess in midfield with Perona and the welcome return of Knight. 

The game opened up a bit with Ashford now trying to press the ball which allowed more space for the Mead to create chances, but their keeper was never called into serious action. 

Gabriel Momadou was replaced by his brother Ralph up front and his pace  and passing caused some upset to the Ashford back four, but their tactic of holding or pulling back continued to be ignored by the referee, and two further seemingly caste iron certain penalties were waved away. 

To their credit, Mead continued to probe and hustle. Hopkins came on for Smith and Mulholland made way for Borchescu, and it was he, on 88 minutes, who was played through on goal and fell to the ground as the tackle came in, that finally got Mead a penalty, courtesy of the linesman flag. 

Constable coolly, scoring his sixth goal in six pre season friendlies, finished to make the final score  1-2.

This was never as entertaining as the Fisher game, but to be fair, Ashford style of play is exactly what we can expect to meet week in week out in the Ryman.  Few teams like to play open passing football like ourselves. 

After a good pre-season with entertaining football, the team are better prepared for those challenges, the summer signings look good and have taken the team performance up a level. Let's just hope we can be patient and turn our possession into goals.