Match Report

MATCH REPORT

Enfield Borough 3 Benfleet 5

It is doubtful that Halloween will be able to throw up anything quite as scary as Enfield Borough’s defending when they lost 5-3 to fellow promotion contenders Benfleet on Saturday. A calamitous succession of both individual and collective mistakes, right from the opening seconds, were ruthlessly capitalised upon by their opponents and ensured that Enfield were always playing catch up in their 200th league match since formation in 2016.

Into the starting line-up came Kombe Kawimbe, Georgi Steed and John Afrane-Kesey in place of Raphael Antwi, Rinidie Lokilo and Walid Hirsi. It took just two minutes for Borough to concede their first goal. Neville Campbell inexplicably failed to control a simple pass inside the Borough penalty box and Aaron Russell was on hand to take advantage and place the ball past Harry Cooke in the Borough goal. Two minutes later the lead was doubled. Borough twice failed to head clear a long throw and when the ball dropped to Billy Shulver on the edge of the penalty area, he took one touch to bring it under control before hitting a shot that drifted over the head of Cooke and into the net. Rattled by such an early setback, Borough nearly pulled a goal back when Kawimbe threaded the ball down the right wing to Grisiano Kadriu who cut in and fired a shot that beat Benfleet keeper Dan Smith, struck the inside of the far post and rebounded to safety.

Midway through the half Enfield got the breakthrough that they desperately craved. Steed’s trickery beat one defender before inducing a rash challenge from a second who tripped the Borough player and conceded a penalty which Steed slammed home. Instead of steadying the ship, this led to two minutes of mayhem in the home team’s defence that could have seen them concede a further three goals. Adam Pollock managed to block one goalbound shot from Ben Foord and from the resulting corner which skimmed off Pollock’s head, Darral Wopara had to acrobatically head off the goal line. When the ball was returned to the box, Cooke was unable to gather cleanly and it was Waiel Hassan’s turn to get in the way of close range effort from Russell. The closing twenty minutes were relatively incident free compared to what had gone before. Kadriu and Wopara set up Adam Al-Asfii, his shot was deflected into the path of Kawimbe whose attempt was straight at Smith. Benfleet wasted a great chance to increase their lead when Russell met Foord’s cross but sent his header wide while Wopara’s dipping shot narrowly cleared the crossbar as the half came to an end.

It took only three minutes for Enfield to gift yet another goal to the visitors. Substitute Lee Scott, who had come on at the interval, was allowed to drift unchallenged past three Enfield players before planting the ball past Cooke. Four minutes later Cooke came outside his box to receive a back pass but lost control of the ball under pressure allowing Russell to score from a narrow angle past a covering defender. Before the hour mark had been reached the tally was up to five as Cooke ventured once more from his area to deal a through ball, but his weak clearing header fell to Billy Purdy who teed it up for Foord to skilfully lob the ball into the vacant net from fully thirty yards. Borough made substitutions who had an immediate impact. Rinidie Lokilo laid the ball back for Wopara who spurned a golden chance by shooting wide when well placed. This was followed by two shots from Million Shaun, the second of which needed tipping over by Smith. From the ensuing corner, Shaun came even closer as his header struck the outside of the post.

Now with a full quota of replacements on the pitch, Borough were having no luck in their quest to force their way back into the contest. Indeed, the situation could have got even worse but Deolindo Lima fired over from a far post cross by Russell. At the other end of the pitch Malachi Soile rose highest to meet a Borough corner, but directed his header wide. With only three minutes to go, Steed whipped in a cross with his left foot that Smith misjudged allowing it to sail over his head and into the net with no one more surprised than the scorer himself who, lying on the pitch, had not seen where the ball ended up. Just as the game about to enter stoppage time, a free kick was played into the Benfleet box. Marcus Samuels got the ball trapped under his feet, but it found its way back to Kyle Finlayter-Lynch who drove it home from twelve yards and in the process became the second youngest goalscorer in Borough history at just sixteen years and nine months.

Two defeats in four days have been a serious blow to Enfield’s promotion ambitions and they will be desperate to get back on track this Saturday when they entertain Hackney Wick at the Maurice Rebak Stadium, kick off 3pm.

Team; Cooke, Kawimbe, Campbell (Antwi), Pollock (Shaun), Hassan, Soile, Afrane-Kesey (Finlayter-Lynch), Wopara, Kadriu (Lokilo), Al-Afsii (Samuels), Steed.