Old Challoners v Sinjun Grammarians

Team: Sunil, Walsh, Cawley, Rogers, Weisz, Fallon, Lowesy, Allen, Fuzz, Dias, Gardner, Baker, Redpath.

Score: 1:1
Att: 2 (Weisz Senior, Redpath Senior)

Old Challoners 1st XI saw a slow start to the season in the first encounter for the club in the dizzy heights of the Senior Division 2 of the AFC. With a relatively unproductive pre-season which entailed just one game it was going to be an interesting test coming up against a Grammarians side who just missed out on promotion the season before.

With a couple of key players missing such as Powell (Groin) and Croucher (Madam Tussauds aka Gay) there was opportunities for the new blood of Matt Allen and Craig Dias coming into the midfield make the step up from the 2s.

Challoners started very brightly - applying a lot of pressure on the Grammarians defence - mainly due to OCs physical presence in and around the box thanks to Jim Baker (our very own Peter Crouch) and creating a number of half chances which just weren't finished off. Grammarians had a couple of opportunities but were pretty limited with Challoners having more of the possession.

Half time came with the scores still deadlocked at 0-0 and it took a defensive 'balls up' to break it. On about 65 minutes, the Challoners defence failed to clear the ball which bobbled around and fell to the Grammarians striker, whose speculative shot beat Sunil with a Lob. 1 - 0 Grammarians.

As always is the way with Old Cs we weren't going to go down without a fight and Challoners upped the tempo once more to try and get the goal back and with 5 minutes to go an excellent move involving Lowesy humping the ball up to Ben Fallon who nodded it onto Fuzz who clinically finished past the keeper......1-1.

The full time whistle came shortly afterwards and the disappointment was apparent in the dressing room. Challoners are used to winning games and the 126 goals in 30 matches last year are proof we're also used to finishing our opportunities - as they say in football......it's a funny old game and we look onto next week against Old Aloysians and the season ahead knowing there's plenty of time to go!

Man of the match: Lowesy