President's Patter for 28th March 2015

Difficult choice of matches with both 1st XI and Res XI having important games and playing locally.
The 1st XI following their draw on Monday evening were away to promotion rivals Southgate Olympic, they led by 2-0 at one time but were pegged back and the match ended in a draw. The game was played in difficult conditions with a strong wind blowing down pitch for the entire game. I think that too many poor results earlier in the season are going to cost us promotion.
I watched the Res XI at EBOG needing a win to gain promotion, we started well and dominated the game but then a succession of errors found us 3-0 down and down to ten men due to a sending off for a second yellow card. Things got worse at half time when we had a second sending off. We were now kicking into a strong wind facing what seemed a hopeless task with 9 men, we had created this situation by stupid behaviour, but the team using the rolling substitutes rule to our advantage put up a magnificent display which led to them scoring the equaliser in the last minute from a free kick.
This team has great spirit and some good players but they have to learn that whatever you think of the referee you gain nothing by disputing their decisions, in this case the ref seemed to be looking for trouble, particularly during the half time interval, your President did not escape this refs wrath and whilst I was trying to assist him I was called a comedian and an old man. At least one of those accusations is true, after that we shut up and scored three goals.
This Saturday the 1st XI play at Old Stationers and the Res XI play NUFC Oilers at home who are our main rivals for the Championship any support will be most welcome.
The 3rd XI probably lost their chance of promotion losing 4-3 to Old Garchonians and all our other teams have completed their fixtures.
Time to start planning for next season as I have said many times before a good skipper makes the team so hopefully we have some good people prepared to put their hands up.