Details
| Date | Time | Season |
|---|---|---|
| 22/12/2023 | 19:45 | 2023-2024 |
Ground
| The Racecourse Ground |
|---|
| Sunninghill and Ascot, Ascot, Windsor and Maidenhead, South East, England, United Kingdom |
Report
22 December 2023
Legends 3-3 Icons
The now traditional pre-Christmas Legends v Icons game was a(nother) classic of the genre. Two evenly matched sides, great goals and late goals, with the spoils ultimately beingshared. Magnificent stuff.
Legends’ gaffers Martin Kay and Doug Page saw their side start on the front foot, and it wasn’t long before they were dominating possession. Leon Palmer-Wilson, standing in the middle of the park like a modern-day Napoleon, directed proceedings impressively in the first half. Stuart Birkett was a willing runner around him and with the ever-dangerous Stuart Tanfield and Abbas Hussain manning the flanks the Legends had plenty of weaponry at their disposal.
The Icons responded by sitting deep and for the most part letting the Legends have the ball. Mike Tomlinson manoeuvred the back line impressively, Darren Lewis went toe-to-toe with Tanfield whilst Ian Davies waited patiently for the opportunity to hit the Legends on the break. As a plan, it wasn’t a bad one.
Sure enough, it was from one of those breakaways that the first goal of the evening came. Carl Collins and Stu Flurry helped get the ball forward quickly, giving Ian Davies the opportunity to run beyond the Legends’ defence. A couple of twists and turns later and the ball was being beautifully eased into the bottom corner from Davies’s left boot. Decent break, decent goal.
The Icons might have had the lead, but that didn’t change the patten of play. Palmer-Wilson kept on conducting, the Icons kept on defending.
The scores were nonetheless levelled up just before half time. An Icons’ defensive blunder presented Andrew Lunn with the chance to bludgeon the ball over Nick Beard and in off the crossbar. 1-1. .
The Legends came out for the second half looking to make the most of the momentum that they took into the break. And, that they did. Lunn was joined by Ben Standing up front and with Birkett looking to do all he could to join them the Icons were coming ever more under the cosh.
It felt like it was only a matter of time before the Legends took the lead, and that they did when Nigel Gatehouse took advantage of defensive hesitancy to add another notch to his ever-growing tally of goals scored. Gatehouse could have added another soon after, a strong header from a corner very nearly getting past the desperate defending of Neil Corbett on the line.
Still, the Legends’ third goal of the evening wasn’t long in coming. Garyth Brant got the ball on the edge of the Icons’ box and curled a shot exquisitely into the corner. Impressive stuff.
That, however, wasn’t quite the end of the story. The Icons hadn’t really got going at all in the second half, but they were still not going to give up without a fight. Ian Davies thought he’d pulled it back to 3-2 when he pounced on a loose ball in the box; no can do, Davies had apparently fouled keeper Eryk Nawala in the process.
The Icons’ star marksman was nonetheless heavily involved in much that his side were doing well, although ultimately he didn’t score either of the two goals that tied things up. It was Jez Myhan who did that. Both goals were well-worked although John Heard needs to take particular plaudits for pinging a beauty of a cross in for the leveller; Myhan rose like a salmon and thudded the ball past a powerless Nawala.
Ultimately it was a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Two sides going hard at it to win, but neither quite having enough to go home with all the glory. 3-3, and plenty to be discussed in the bar afterwards. Well done one and all.
LEGENDS: Martin Kay (Director of Football), Doug Page (on field Tsar), Stuart Birkett, Garyth Brant, Scott Brown, Abbas Hussain, Ryan Joseph, Nigel Gatehouse, John Gavin, Andrew Lunn, Leon Palmer-Wilson, Mickey Parker, Eryk Nawala, Jad Sidhu, Ben Standing, Stuart Tanfield and Dave Thompson.
GOALS. Andrew Lunn, Nigel Gatehouse, Garyth Brant.
ICONS: Stu Flurry and Dave Porter (co-player-managers), Adam Abusweder, Nick Beard, Carl Collins, Neil Corbett, Ian Davies, Dave Freer, John Heard, Dan Hough, Darren Lewis, Jez Myhan, Richard Rowe, Mike Tomlinson and Phil White.
GOALS. Jez Myhan (2), Ian Davies