Match Preview

Next up - Bowers & Pitsea away on Saturday, 4th March at Crown Avenue, SS13 1BE, Ryman Isthmian League Div 1 North. Kick off 3pm.

Admission £9, £5 seniors and children.

There was always the hope that our last three games against the top two clubs in the division would produce at least a point or two. Perhaps they should as we certainly deserved to have drawn at home to Maldon & Tiptree and surely could have done the same at home to Brightlingsea but for defensive mistakes. But in the end those three games followed the form book or, depending how you wish express these things, went according to the relative positions in the league table.

Still, those games are over and we won't face the top two again this season. However, Saturday's match pits us against a side hardly less daunting with the current table showing Bowers & Pitsea fifth in the table, occupying the last play-off place. Our home game against them in November was the first after Kyle Forster went into purdah following the defeat to Heybridge and found us with the inexperienced Lewis Todd in goal. Regrettably the 3-2 defeat was yet another of those games that might so easily have had a different outcome.

It's interesting that last Saturday's game was against a side buoyed by a midweek 5-0 home win in their previous game; now we face Bowers & Pitsea who beat Norwich United by that score on Tuesday. This time our opponents have home advantage as we visit Crown Avenue for the first time.

And advantage it seems to be with their last three home games all having been won without conceding a single goal whilst scoring eleven at the other end - Tilbury and Heybridge being the victims before Norwich.

Our record against Bowers and Pitsea:-

We have met Bowers twice before they entered the league this season though they were Bowers United in those games, having since absorbed Pitsea FC.