In the penultimate matchday of the PDFL Walking Football League season, it was a mixed bag of results for Strollers, with one win and one loss which means that Strollers retain their position at third in the table behind Norwich City B & Netherton B who take their battle for the title right to the wire next month.
Strollers still have a good opportunity then to cement our place as the "best of the rest" in what has been a truly competitive league, with everyone has been capable of beating everyone else and most games have been very closely fought. Indeed it is worth noting that the two defeats suffered by current leaders Norwich B have both been at the hands of the Strollers, with us having finished victorious in both of our matches against them, winning 3-2 and 5-1 respectively!
Back to yesterdays matches then and as I intimated above we enjoyed mixed fortunes.
Stamford Strollers 2, Harborough Hornets Yellow 1 (Blakemore & Walker)
The first of two matches on the day against teams immediately below us in the league, so this was a real six pointer. Strollers struggled to play to full potential but still managed to dominate the game against a robust Harborough side. Having moved into a two goal lead in the first half, a goal for Harborough midway through the second led to a few anxious moments late in the game, but Strollers held on for what was on balance a deserved win.
Stamford Strollers 2, Norwich City A 3 ( Ross & Tillen)
Norwich City A came into this game without a break after their first game of the day, a 1-0 defeat at the hands of second in the table Netherton B. Taking on an opponent who have just come off a "back to back" fixture can work in two ways. Ideally it would have meant that Strollers would be rested and energetic compared to our opponents, however on this occasion it transpired that Norwich came into their game against us very much "up to speed" and took the energy of their close game against Netherton into our fixture. The result of this was that they established what would prove to be an unsurmountable lead by half time of 3-0. A much stronger second half by Strollers brought the score back to 2-3 and we certainly had the opportunities to level the score, but unfortunately that ultimately proved evasive.
All in all another creditable performance by the Strollers Squad. Special note of thanks to Paul Giffen who stepped in at very short notice to play in goal in place of Paul Newiss who had to withdraw the night before the game due to a very troublesome knee condition. We all wish Paul a speedy recovery from his condition and hope to see him back on the field as soon as possible.
Another related note of congratulations to absent Stroller, Paul Kirby, who was unable to play in this match day due to him being on international duty playing for England in the Basque Country International tournament in which England 50+ squad finished as runners up. We look forward to welcoming Paul back to the Strollers squad for our final PDFL matchday in June.
That's it for now all....except to note the roll call for your Strollers Squad who played this weekend which was...
Paul Giffen
Paul Blakemore
Charles Walker
Iain Ross
Paul Archer
Lee Tillen
Colin Barrett-Treen
