The Valence team turned up at Ashford already grumbling about the late start time, pouring rain, tardy umpires and strangely dark floodlights. However Back’s customary berating of the team for the apparent lassitude of their warm up (none of the old second team having dared to mention yet that this is the most warming up they’ve done for years) seemed to do the trick and they started very much on the front foot against an opposition who had inflicted so many one goal defeats on them in recent times. Valence’s passing and link up play was very pleasing with good signs that the new look team was really starting to gel. They had a number of decent attacks with many of them down to excellent reading of the game by midfield maestro Willson resulting in interceptions followed by mazy dribbling up the field and offloads to the hard working Sheldon or Kirkham. An early instance of this resulted in Kirkham hammering home the opener and gave the visitors the momentum to go on and take the first half 3-0, via two Kirkham flicks, one nearly saved from a short corner. This was also made possible by good shifting of the ball out wide to the skilful Bray and Blanchard and on to Angel and the returning Davies. One of the best Ashford attacking chances was cunningly snubbed out by Angel; having spotted the home side were outnumbering Valence 5 to 2 in a swift attack, and unable to get back, he simply sidled past the umpire whilst muttering some unspecified abuse which duly resulted in said umpire blowing up and stopping the game, thus allowing the rest of the midfield to reshape.

It was predicted during the half time team talk that Ashford would come out fighting and to the great credit of their young team they really did. The second half was quite a different game with Ashford putting together attack after attack. It was testament to the performance of the defence including the incredibly solid midfielder Tragett, who’s only ‘on call’ phone call luckily turned out just to be a customer satisfaction survey from Anne Summers. In this crucial part of the game a key tweak to the team was the return of Young in goal. Not only did he stop everything that came his way but in the absence of the steadfast Parker and Turnill it allowed Whitmill to put in an heroic performance in central defence along with the always classy Back. The latter did make the mistake of not being able to hear the umpire for which he was quite rightly sent off , having also got in trouble earlier for being hit in the chest by a lifted ball. The concrete like defence was also helped out by Sheldon junior whose determination in the 50:50 challenges really helped to provide an outlet up the right hand side. During one of many tight situations in the Valence defence Davies was able to show his new found aerial skills to unlock an escape route, and it later emerged he had used his delayed start to the season to practice these in his garden , much to the frustration of his neighbours. It is hoped that Blanchard, who’s aerials have previously been likened to tired penguins attempting to exit the ocean, uses the Christmas break to effect a similar improvement.

However, the worst incident of the day was left to Barr, who, obviously still smarting from being described as “elderly” the previous week, reacted to a bad challenge in a way that clearly showed his years have not yet bought him wisdom, and was duly sent off, luckily along with the opposition challenger. The only upside of this was that, when Kirkham was later set free in a now rare Valence attack, Barr was sufficiently rested to be able to keep up. Having been forced wide and already with a hat-trick to his name, Kirkham was happy to set up Barr who appeared to fool the goalkeeper by seemingly operating in slow motion and was then able to hit the backboard.

This hit the opposition and more Valence attacks eventually resulted in yet another Kirkham goal via a flicked short corner. It meant the result was 5-0 to Valence but it truly felt like the hardest fought 5-0 ever and a highly encouraging performance to take into the Christmas break.

Goals: Kevin Kirkham (4); Andy Barr

MOM: Kevin Kirkham

Team: Stewart Young (GK), Russell Blanchard, Mark Whitmill (C), Rob Bray, Chris Back, Tom Willson, Andy Barr, Ben Tragett, Brett Angel, Chris Sheldon (VC), Jack Sheldon, Jack Davies, Kevin Kirkham.
Umpires: Provided by Ashford

Match Report by Andy Barr.

The 2nd Xl’s next League game will be away against Herne Bay 3rd Xl at 13.30 on Sat 15th January 2022.