If we wanted to push for promotion this season we needed to pick up 3 points from teams in the lower half of the table, teams like Chipstead, but it wasn’t to be.
From the Friday we knew it was going to be a struggle, Cherry & Steve weren’t available, Matt was with the first, and Sean having to take Mark’s place in goal, that’s four of our midfield out before Saturday came!
Chris made a return from his knee injury, which was a blessing as we were struggling for players and another phone call to Phill and we had 12.

The game started scrappy for us and it looked like Chipstead were up for the game.
Sean was kept very busy in goal and pulled of a string of top class saves throughout the game. We took the lead against the run of play when Sam chased the ball down, hassled there full back and keeper who in turn got mixed up and left Sam with an open goal, 1 – 0 to us.
Chipstead equalised pretty soon after with a well taken goal that Sean had no chance with 1 – 1.

After that things just weren’t happening for us, lack of communication, not making the easy passes, in general making the game look hard and making it easy for Chipstead. The only other player trying to make things happen for us was Jak, who was running his heart out, he started the game upfront but after about 20 minutes swapped with Sam and slotted into right midfield and proved not just to be good with the ball at his feet by showing his willingness at winning the ball and creating a few chances.

The second half was no better for us and we went 3 – 1 down thanks to two sloppy goals that we gifted Chipstead with.
Phill came on for Sam early in the second half as Sam was still struggling with that “Broken Leg” he suffered against Westerham 4th a few weeks back!
Phill brought a bit of a spark back to our game but we were never going to get back into this game the way we were playing.

To be fair we were a good few players down and we struggled to make our midfield come out on top, we wasn’t holding the positions we were meant to be playing in which made it very difficult for us to get on top of the game.
Although we were struggling for players today we still had the quality in the team to beat Chipstead but we made it hard for ourselves the whole game.

Sean was a well deserved MOTM, altough Jak wasn't far behind.