Having already lost Josh Hart and James Shaw to previous commitments the Ressies then had captain James Butler promoted to the First Team and lost Joe Naylor through a back injury from Wednesday nights game. This meant that it was a relative bunch of strangers who took the field against a competent Met Police outfit.
We set out a defensive 4-5-1 shape in order to allow our opponents to play in front of us ,allow no space in behind and hopefully make good use of limited possession and set pieces. With First teamer George Carberry returning from injury pulling the strings in midfield we generally maintained our shape and Jack Sunderland made inroads from wide out left. Met Police made several breaks on our exposed right hand side which necessitated an early substitution and we began to match our opponents until one poor decision in midfield by resulted in Met Police taking the lead within 3 passes.

Playing up the slope we endeavoured to give away a second goal within 10 mins when their forward was given too much room to get a pass into the area which resulted in a neat finish.

We then started to get some urgency and tempo into our play and although Met Police had a couple of chances we too on another day could have found the net and indeed hit the woodwork on a couple of occasions and their keeper produced a marvellous finger tip save after a deflection and several crosses just needed the final touch.

It is difficult to fault the effort of those involved but we this will be a very long season if we don't stop making mistakes which will be punished by the vast majority of teams in this Division.

T.Callendar. Z.Crawford ( O.Ruttle)P.Bagatti,L.Barkers-Obua,G.Ball.
B.Twelves,C.Church. G.Carberry.(Y.Seodi).R.Cole(T.Shaw).I.Ejimofor( M.Cole) J.Sunderland.

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