Amateur Football Combination 1 London Legal League 0

Report courtesy of Dave Stanners

Early or unexpected exit from a major cup used to be, for the big boys, a signal to trot out that once overused euphemism for a managerial licking of wounds, ‘we’re concentrating on the league’, while looking over one’s shoulder for that Sword of Damocles in the back, the positive endorsement by the club chairman. 

Not so for A.F.C. managers Paul Rumley and Rory Vermeulen who know they have the framework of a good side. Naturally they are intensely disappointed with the league team’s early departure from the National Systems League Cup which puts ‘pay to play’ clubs into a genuine football context in England and indeed, arguably, in Europe and they desperately want to transfer their erstwhile success at club level to a thoroughly deserving league. They are also philosophical about the task in hand, knowing that now they have to motivate players who have the rather less exciting prospect of non-competitive football at representative level for a considerable time. This involves playing against the minnows in their pool which was the case for their match with the London Legal Leagues at Haringay on Tuesday 13^th. October. 

The legal eagles were never going to be a super challenge and so it proved as the A.F.C. defence continued to demonstrate impermeability and the midfield set about creating openings up front. The nub of the A.F.C. problem is no secret and was starkly shown up as chances were spurned for lack of urgency and a killer instinct which was, possibly understandably, absent. Rumley and Vermeulen were helped in their task of giving trials to strikers Lewis Jones and Alex Salmon by the fact that the in form Ed Glover, even though willing to warm the bench, was indisposed and it was a bonus that Parmiterians’ Lewis Jones, who is the leading scorer in the league with ten got the late winner albeit in a melee following a corner. This was the result of a twenty minute power play thus underlining the need for concerted effort and the need to look deeper than failure in front of goal for a lack of goals. 

This match can be rightly treated as the early days of reconstruction work in progress. 

AFC Squad: Henry, Pointer, Abberley, Thompson, N. Jones, Eguae, Gerrish, Keane, Akinzele, Sawyer, L. Jones, Salmon, Glover.