Horley Town 1 Egham Town 1

COMBINED COUNTIES LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION
SATURDAY 20 APRIL 2013
HORLEY TOWN 1 (1) EGHAM TOWN 1 (0)

Egham Town scorer: Jamie Read (75)

Finally it comes down to this. Guernsey took revenge for losing at Hanworth Villa by thrashing them 5-1 tonight, albeit with Villa apparently down to ten minutes with the score at 1-1. Before this evening’s game Egham Town struggled to a 1-1 draw at Horley Town, gifting the home side a 17th minute lead with Jim Ward’s own goal, then struggling until the 75th minute to look like a side sitting atop the Combined Counties League.

Egham Town: P 38 W 28 D 5 L 5 F 100 A 41 GD 59 Pts 89
Guernsey: P 32 W 23 D 5 L 4 F 108 A 43 GD 65 Pts 74

After losing at Croydon Egham put together an eight game winning streak, but since then the sequence has read DDWWDWDD – three wins and five draws in the last eight. What it proves is that Egham are hard to beat, none more so than Thursday’s recovery from 0-3 and a man down at South Park to a 4-4 draw, Brendan Matthew and a Jamie Read hat-trick , including a last minute equaliser from the spot, securing the point. Five draws mean ten points lost. It’s easy to calculate that Guernsey can amass 104 points, given a 100% record, to Egham’s 101. How galling it would be for Lee Pasmore and his team to see the Channel Islanders snatch the title when they today’s elevation to second is the highest they have been since the early stages of a campaign in which Egham and Epsom & Ewell have swapped top place. Epsom & Ewell, good enough to beat Egham 1-0 in midweek in the League Cup semi-final and bad enough to lose today at 22nd placed Sandhurst Town, are out of the picture now. Of course the best Egham can do now is win their last four to keep the pressure on Guernsey, who themselves have dropped points and have to fit in ten games in 16 days, including a home fixture against Chessington & Hook (to whose Chalky Lane ground Egham travel on Tuesday) tomorrow. However, on the island Guernsey have lost only once, eight of their games are at their Footes Lane ground (albeit with a four games in four days hurdle to clear at season’s end) and all bar possibly the visit of the aforementioned Epsom & Ewell look eminently winnable.
Most of the above held true before Egham played Horley for the first time this season, the return coming on 30 April, sandwiched by home games against Hartley Wintney and Bedfont Sports. It did not help therefore when a long ball down the inside right channel found Adam Pullen, whose first time cross found the usually rock solid Jim Ward unprepared, the ball clipping off him and over Paul Borg’s goalline. It took until the 42nd minute for Thursday’s hat-trick hero Read to get a shot on target. Egham had come into this match with 99 league goals yet of late it has been at times hard to see how, given a general tendency to try to find an extra pass instead of getting shots in. It was the abandonment of this policy that salvaged the game at South Park, albeit on a pitch opened up with both sides reduced to ten men. Read headed over and shot wide before half time, giving the travelling faithful hope of an improved second half. Unfortunately that did not happen, half an hour of evenly contested midfield toil the prelude to, at last, a move of quality as Jacob Lambe and Luke Muldowney combined before the latter set Read free for a well taken cross shot to beat Dan Chatfield in the home goal. Reis Stanislaus then had two chances within thirty seconds to score what would surely have been the winner but both times his shots were straight at Chatfield. The final chance for the Sarnies came in the fifth minute of extra time from a Read free kick but again Chatfield did his job.
So to Tuesday, and a trip to Chessington & Hook, a ground on which an eye-catching 8-3 win was registered. Given that Egham have also won 7-3 and lost 5-6 in this fixture there is the prospect of a goalfest in the Sarnies’ last away game of the season. Hopefully Egham will rediscover their form so they can march on to the title that they deserve, instead of limping to a runners-up slot from which promotion is far from guaranteed. In other news the man whose departure paved the way for Lee Pasmore’s installation as Town manager, John Hamsher, quit this week as Chipstead Town boss. The Chips slid down the table from play-off contention and now find themselves in 20th place. The report on Pitchero Non-League is accompanied by a photo I took of our then brand new manager outside our club house.

EGHAM TOWN: Paul Borg, Tim Pitt, Joel Jacobs, Jim Ward, Alex Rodrigues, Luke Muldowney, Louis Chandler-Joseph, Patrick Craig, Brendan Matthew, Jamie Read, Kemo Maphela. Subs: Jacob Lambe (Matthew, 57), Reis Stanislaus (Luke Craig, 55), Tom Hedges (Pitt, 63), Junior Wright, Jack McKinlay.

Mark