OHAFC III 3 Old Merchant's Taylor 2

It’s the captaincy that’s been on the tip of everyone’s tongues, “Will he/wont he step up?”, “Does he even have it in him?”, and “Surely he’s too much of a good lad to take on that much responsibility?” At the end of the day he proved them wrong – Captain Cal to the rescue. Declining numerous requests from the 1’s and 2’s, and in true people’s person style, Ludo Callander made his armband debut for the 3’s.

The sun was low, the air was crisp and with a late wake up from our main coach driver Benjy Sewell the 3’s were chucked onto the pitch 5 minutes before kick-off. However, playing downhill the team rose quickly to the challenge and immediately got in Merchant Taylor’s face with some beautiful passing in the middle courtesy of Pom Beeley and Humphrey Atchison. The 3’s kept most of the possession with the odd counter coming in the form of Merchant Taylor’s no.11 dubbed the ‘Suarez’ of their team. Edward Page applied a lot of pressure down the left which not before long led to a misfired MT clearance which landed in the feet of Oli Walker who calmly on his first touch slotted home Harrow’s first goal. Hopes were high, smiles were upon faces and murmurs of, “It’s due to the new captaincy” could be heard on the side- line as the 3’s went into a blissful state confidence.

Gallagher pulled out some wonderful saves from their persistent crosses but the teams confidence soon turned into complacency and not long before half time MT put home a goal on the edge of the box into our bottom left. Harrow went into half time with heads held high despite knowing that the second half was going to prove difficult with the low sun and incline. Immediately, Harrow put another one on MT with a cultured tap on from 2’s recruit George Pratt into the feet of Oli Feather who coolly nutmegged the keeper leading to Harrow’s second goal. Replays show the keeper fumbling the ball through his own legs but who’s counting?

Harrow’s response to this ended up in us dropping too deep and despite some fantastic defence from Chuka Illogu who played with supreme confidence (most likely due to the night before) it wasn’t long until the overwhelming attack of MT led to them equalising. Callander, being the gentleman he is, bogged it and gave MT the ball for a throw-in before he was in position which consequently lead to a run down the wing by Suarez who crossed it into the middle leading to MT equalising. From then on it was battle stations, and some impeccable defending from Ed Massey and dynamic play from Alec Fogarty lead to a break down the left wing where the ball found the feet of Oli Walker who, in composed fashion, found the back of the net. Bang, 3-2, whistle went, what you worried about?

Post-match talks with Suarez, who by the way is such a nice guy, said that we were the best oppo hes faced all season. The main positive we can take is that we have now beaten the top two teams in the league. With a little more consistency in the squad there is no reason why we can’t be pushing for a promotion next season and take us out of the 5th Division that is plagued by rising 1st teams (of which this Merchant Taylor side was one).

Man of the match hands down goes to Ed Massey, who was quite frankly outstanding in defence and completely shut out MT’s attack (but obviously not good enough for the 2’s so we’ll hold onto him thanks). TFC of the match goes to Benjy Sewell – a fine performance in which I don’t think he got the ball once! Bravo!

Team line-up can be viewed in the Results section.