REPORT:

Eastwood Falcons Over 60s Blues had a relatively successful start to the season with their first set of league fixtures on Tuesday 23rd April. 

 

The opening fixture against Chelmsford City Clarets was expected to be a difficult start against a strong side, but Falcons went one up about half way through the first half through a deflected long range strike from Steve Williams. We probably just about deserved the lead and and early in the second half - and shortly after missing a fairly good opportunity - Mark Hughes put us two up with a first time strike from just outside the D following some good football and a superb square ball from Paul Smeeton. From then on the game was fairly even. Rob Kentonl made some excellent saves to keep Chelmsford at bay, but they eventually struck to get one back with about 2 minutes left to play, after which Eastwood played some good possession football to see the game out for an opening win.

 

Beacon Hill is one of the new clubs in the league this season so the outcome was always going to be a bit of a mystery. Eastwood had most of the possession throughout and controlled the game from the start without creating many goals scoring opportunities. Mid way through the second half Ken Anderson pushed forward and managed to get a shot in from close range which somehow crept under the goal keepers body and into the net. That proved to be enough to give Eastwood the win in a game they should probably have won more easily. The same applied to game three against Stones Athletic - another new team this season. Although Eastwood were narrowly the better side, the teams cancelled each other out with some good defending and goal keeping, resulting in a 0-0 draw.

 

The last game versus Billericay Town Blues was a huge disappointment in that Eastwood were without doubt the stronger side but failed to capitalise on that. Early in the second half a long range shot flew past an unsighted Rob Kenton in goal - probably considered a good goal if you’ve scored it and a bad one to concede - giving Billericay a 1-0 victory. 

 

Overall the team played well throughout and 7 points from a possible 12 was an encouraging start to the season and only one point less than the team gathered during the whole of last season. So we should be happy, but I think the team felt disappointed at not getting at least 2 more points. It leaves us in joint second place (third on GD) and three points behind Norwich who drew with the Billericay team that beat us 1-0 in a game we could well have won .  So we don’t need to fear any team in this division. Our next four fixtures fixtures in May are all against teams in the bottom half of the table which gives us an opportunity to set an early pace in this division and we should feel confident of doing that.