Like Taking On Chelsea

A Class U10s played their long awaited first competitive game of the season today and it was a toughie.................straight into the first round of the London County FA Cup.

Not only that, they were pitched in against probably the biggest and best funded youth football club in the country ~ and beat them with a penalty 20 seconds from the end of normal time!

Long Lane Junior Football Club recently received record funding for any football club with a staggering £897,264 from The Football Foundation, another £31,000 from the Football Association and are one of very few football clubs to receive full charitable status. They run 38 teams and have a fantastic complex just off the South Circular at Kidbrooke where another £103,00 of self raised money has gone to create a truly magnificent venue ~ longlanejfc.co.uk and take a look at that.

Our modest little Inner London set up has to take the boys all the way to Walthamstow to secure the pre-required GRASS pitches we need to play in this competition and the Waltham Forest Youth Sunday League and The excellent Peter May Sports Ground ~ owned by The London Playing Fields Association ~ and you can survey that at lpff.org.uk and follow links.

The reason I am posting this is because all of us need to be aware that such sites are real treasures and we should ALL ensure they are never taken away from our youth to develope their skills and futures on, as many politicians would have happen.

Peter May is 8 miles from our home base and as most of you know we play our Midweek League matches on the Market Road Astroturf facility in Kings Cross where I spent an enthralling three hours on Friday evening watching players from 8 to 12 strutting their stuff. We have to go so far out of Islington because it is the ONLY London Borough that fails to provide even ONE natural grass pitch for footballers to play on................this in the home borough of the Mayor of London Boris Johnson

As for that game today, it was a classic and after withstanding an early onslaught from much bigger and heavier opponents and going a goal down, our team took the game to them in true A Class "Tikka Takka" style walking the ball through the "Land of the Giants" and through the onrushing keepr's legs to equalise.

Then cue scandal: the ref managed to be the only person on the ground not to see our second "goal" go at least a foot over the goal line before being hacked clear and then immediately awarded the most ridiculous penalty at the other end for a shot fired straight at the tucked in elbow of a defender................instead of 2-1, it's 1-2 and half time arrives.

A purely sensational blast from outside the box nearly took the net off the bar to leave the ref in no dounbt this time that the ball HAD gone into the goal and we were level and then that unbelievable last gasp penalty for an equally ridiculous ball to hand and we were home and dry.

Anthony had a great personal battle with the opposition captain today and managed to be asked to play wide left, wide right and for a spell on his own up front as the coaches tried all they could to get the upper hand.

We enjoyed that today, he can't play for them on Tuesday night when the League starts as he has to be at QPR, but he's back in the fray for Friday night's fixture after Thursday night back at QPR again...............it's a busy week!