Cambridge University vs Amateur Football Combination 2002

Cambridge University 2 Amateur Football Combination 3 (Chris Sonne 3) - 11th December 2002 at Fenners, Cambridge.

AFC Team: James Holdsworth, Matthew Jeilay (both Old Hamptonians), Andy Voss, Rick Hirst (both UCL Academicals), John O'Brien (Old Ignatians), Alex Hugh-Jones (Old Meadonians), Lewis Delaney (captain), John Jeyes, Alan O'Driscoll (all Old Danes), Francis Birch, Sean O'Donnell (both Old Aloysians). Substitutes: Brenton Amedee (UCL Academicals, 12 minutes for O'Donnell), Chris Sonne (Old Camdenians, 46 minutes for Hirst), Mathew Cefai (Clapham Old Xaverians, 68 minutes for Delaney), Dave Harvey (Old Danes, 83 minutes for Cefai).

Video Clips

Courtesy of Dave McCarthy we have two video clips from this match. Both are 5-7 seconds long, and require some sort of "avi player" (e.g. RealPlayer or Windows Media Player) to run. Be warned that each is 3-4 Mb long, and will take 10-20 minutes to download on a 56k modem (about 2-4 minutes with a broadband connection).

Match Report

This match report comes from Dave "Motty" McCarthy, who missed the first part of the game having not been aware of the change of ground and earlier kickoff time, but still managed to turn up. We'll have to send him to the wrong town next time!!!

Hopefully we shall get some video clips added of the game in the next few days.

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"Cambridge University opened the scoring with a 20-yard dipping drive, from out of the blue with our keeper off his line. We held this until half time, but then quickly gave away a sloppy 2nd goal with some naive defending, leaving a Cambridge forward with the simplest of headers.

On a bitterly cold afternoon the game kept the watching few warmed up by being fast paced and furious. We had a number of chances to score both before and after their second goal, but on the occasions we managed to get behind their back line, we found the University keeper in fine form.

A positive attitude saw us slowly get to grips with the game, and Chris Sonne of Old Camdenians pulled us back in the game with a real poachers goal in the goal area.

Soon after we were back on level terms when some nifty footwork by Old Dane John Jeyes left two Cambridge players in his wake, one other on the floor both hurt and puzzled as to where the ball had gone, before slipping the ball to Chris Sonne to fire home from an angle.

The game could have swung either way, and with time rapidly running out it looked as though a draw that everyone would have been happy with was on the cards, but Chris Sonne had other ideas and he completed his hat-trick with a looping header from a free-kick two minutes from time to deflate the University side.

To be fair the university team played some really attractive free flowing football, and split the AFC side open time and time again, but failed to find the final touch to put the game beyond our reach, and over the 90 mins on the day I thought they were the better side.

They also found our man of the match, UCL Academicals defender Andy Voss in fine form, as he time and time again made some life saving challenges, one of note when he came from nowhere to tip the ball off a Cambridge toe as the forward was about to shoot (and probably score).

Bolstered by some really good attitude and character, led by Old Meadonian Alex Hugh-Jones, we battled back and gave as good as we got in the attractive football stakes, but found the Cambridge defence just that bit sharper, and often it was always just a well timed toe poke that took the ball away from us, and they were then very strong in follow up 50-50 challenges, and won most of them. Our biggest fault was that we held on to the ball a touch too long, and the quality of their tackling was high, and they frequently robbed us of possession and counter attacked, and did so with quality and at speed, leaving us appearing to chase shadows.

Overall an excellent game, well worth the 200 mile round trip to watch, especially as we came away with a superb result."