Ites 3 West Wickham 1

 

Daltons Weekly annual bicentennial shield

 

Dan Weller standing in for Rob Wilson #freethesheppeyone

 

Sheppey welcomed the visitors from the Southern amateur league who were fresh from playing the likes of Old Wilsonians, Old Parkonians, Old Mother Hubbard and Old El Paso to Holm Park for another scintillating cup match, our 15th of the season so far by my reckoning.

 

Straight from kick off The Ites were all over West Wickham like Harvey Weinstein on an aspiring actress (allegedly). The evergreen Timmy Babington and Dan ‘better than Tom’ Bradshaw came close to putting us in the lead within the first six minutes but were denied by quite frankly amazing work from the visiting goalkeeper.

 

After 15 minutes of relentless Sheppey attacks being thwarted the ball broke free for West Wickham and they went on their first foray into the Sheppey half. Never mind, we all thought, there’s no way this will come to anything, we all stopped watching and started discussing which way we thought the next round of Brexit talks should go and the North Korea situation when we heard the ref blow the whistle, must be offside we assumed, imagine our horror when we looked to see the ref pointing at the spot, didn’t see the alleged offence occur but it must have been just so we could give them a chance, no other explanation for it. 0-1 West Wickham, goalkeeper very nearly got a hand on it. 

 

The rest of the first half was a cagey affair, West Wickham defending their lead with eleven men behind the ball, Sheppey being kept out by the superb goalkeeper. Thoughts turn at times like these to Strictly come dancing. Aston’s in the final all day long mate, but that Alexandra Burke has been improving week on week and I hope she does well because the singing never worked out for her. In my opinion nobody can come close to Pixie Lott. I’d love to have another look at her Charleston.

 

Half time 0-1

 

Sheppey emerged from the changing rooms at half time with the realisation that in order to win football matches you have to score more goals than the opposition and who better than to convey the manifestation of managers instructions than Furious George Batten with a well taken shot from inside/outside (delete as applicable) the area to equalise on the 47 minute mark.

 

We could smell blood now, circling our prey like a bogus tradesman in an area of sheltered accomodation

 

55 minutes, free kick to Sheppey outside the area. Obviously, otherwise it would be a penalty wouldn’t it. Ian ‘captain fantastic’ Batten steps up to curl it straight in the top corner to make it 2-1 to Sheppey and put both Batten brothers on the score sheet for the first time since the last time it happened. Massive headache for Ernie as he now has to pay both of them double pocket money this week.

 

Two minutes later we’d barely stopped doing the conga round the Ites bar and Tim Babingtons hard work all through the game paid off by smashing another one home to make it 3-1 with just over half an hour to go. Sit back, don’t strain yourselves, goal difference don’t count for owt in these cup matches. One touch, tiki taka, total football were all present as we just sat back and kept possession like it was our ball and we picked the teams.

 

Well done to our goalkeeper, confident and can actually catch the ball. 

 

Man of the match – Andy Constable