PROGRAMMES FROM THE PAST

Here we are at the end of the first week of March with a couple of East Grinstead matches played in the past at that same sort of time for me to write about – helped by the programme that was produced for the match.

First up we have East Grinstead v Broadbridge Heath on Saturday 8 March 2008 in the County League second division with what I think must be a diving header from Michael Belli on the front cover. Was Michael really playing for us all of 15 years ago?

Manager Steve Norris talks about the last five matches – all of which were away games – with no home game since the first few days of February. Four of these matches had been league matches with a cup tie away to division one team Ringmer as well.

He was very happy with the way we played in that cup match though somehow we lost it 3-0. We then have a quick round-up of those five most recent games – which resulted in 2 wins and 2 draws in the league matches.

Richard Tramontin tells us that our visitors have had a bad time since Christmas and had picked up just one point since then. On the other hand the 2007/08 season was an excellent one for us and the programme’s league table shows us on top with 60 points –ten points ahead of second-placed Lingfield and with three games in hand over them –while Broadbridge Heath were now four places off the bottom.

Back to the match. We had already played Broadbridge Heath twice - both of them away. A 6-5 win in October in the Sussex Senior Cup and – by contrast – a 1-0 win in the league in November. Both of these matches before their recent bad run.

Our good form and their lack of form suggested a comfortable afternoon for us. Which it would have been had we taken some of the many chances that we created against a team happy to defend in depth. However just as it looked as if we’d have to settle for a goalless draw up popped sub Tom Saunders to score in the last couple of minutes.

Continued from Page 10

Moving on a few years we come to our first season in the Isthmian League for East Grinstead v Herne Bay on Saturday 7 March 2015. John Sinclair appears on the programme’s front cover – the same photo of him seemed to appear quite a few times on our programme back then!

Richard Tramontin welcomes our visitors who are having a good run and he goes on to remind us that we had lost 4-0 in the reverse match in September – a defeat that was not helped by a couple of schoolboy defensive mistakes, and what we thought was an incorrect referee decision.

However, he was able to talk warmly about our most recent game at the end of February away to top three side Merstham – where we won 10 for our first win in eight games.

Not surprisingly manager Tony Beckingham also spoke warmly of that win, our first win in eight matches, all the better as we played the last 30 minutes with ten men after John-Paul Collier was sent off.

The league table showed us in 20th place (out of 24 teams in the league) with Herne Bay eighth. (Interesting that the four teams below us in the table included Hastings, Ramsgate and Horsham – two of them now in the top Isthmian League and the third perhaps joining them next season.)

We weren’t able to build on that Merstham win and with just one goal in the match it was Herne Bay who scored it to go back home with the points.

If your memory has been jogged following this article, then I’d be happy to hear from you at lestermedcalf@btinternet.com.