There was a panic on the Forum assembling a squad for our 7 a side match against Emerald Rovers which resulted in Laurence Hughes and Trevor Hughes both being named in a 7 man squad. Fortunately, I arranged for James Mandell to make his debut to replace me but we had to start with 6 players as James was stuck on the Piccadilly line. We were grateful to ‘Paul’ from bottom team North London for helping us out to make the squad up to 7 and some blatant time wasting from Jacko in goal as well as some good saves kept the score at 0-0 until James arrived. Martin Loveday was making a rare appearance in midfield as Terry Moore and Alan Barnard played at the back and Martin followed up his goal last Sunday with a fierce strike to give us the lead before half time. Early in the second half Martin scored his second with an excellent header from a fine cross by James. Emerald pulled one back with a penalty following a handball but two minutes later Martin completed his hat trick when Alan Barnard’s shot rebounded off him after hitting the post. We were playing some excellent football with growing confidence and Lee King rounded off a fine performance with a superb turn and finish. Emerald pulled another goal back near the end but we held on for a well deserved 4-2 win.

Just filling in the results book and noticed that tonight's result was the first time we had beaten Emerald Rovers in 6 attempts.
We had lost all 5 of the previous matches against them, with a 1-5, a 0-9 and a 1-9 amongst them !

Obviously it helped that they didn't have Niall Ritchie (ex-Republic Of Ireland U-21 International) playing for them this time, but it was still a really good performance.

As I said to everyone afterwards, we quite often win and play well when I have to play !

Finger me!!!! Perhaps you could turn out for England now and again too.......

It begs the question, where we really short of players or did Laurence deliberately make it so he was required so that we could break our duck against these boys. Laurence you truly are a master tactician!

I would like to say the latter, but unfortunately we were genuinely short of players !

By the way, I am getting quite a few prospective new players now phoning up wanting to join us after recently moving to live in the area and then Google-searching for 'Edmonton F.C.', but every single one of them is a forward, they don't drive, and they are shocked when I tell them they have to pay us a £30 signing-on & £5 per match instead of it being the other way round !
Very frustrating, as we badly need more defenders (particularly full-backs for a 4-4-2) and a right midfielder who actually wants to play in that position. (Dean and Tony don't !)

I will re-word the advert on the new League website (www.walthamfootballleague.co.uk) when I launch it tomorrow.

How about right-back in a 4-4-2 ?
That's what we were discussing last night, as 4-4-2 worked really well last Sunday, but Olie is not playing this week and now Jim has dropped out.
That means we can only do 4-4-2 this week if forwards and midfielders volunteer to play at right-back and left-back.
(James Mandell is a left-sided or central midfielder by the way).