Shepway Vs. Ipswich .

On a cold, damp day in the depths of Kent , a day when even the referee didn’t turn up, the Ipswich boys took on top of the league Shepway Wanderers.

Things got of to a disappointing start for Town, as with in minutes a Shepway striker had latched on to a defensive misunderstanding between Akehurst and his defence, enabling him to tuck the ball into the net giving the lead to the home side. 

A further 20 minutes passed and another four goals had placed into the Town’s net; Hennon later describe these as goals that you wouldn’t even expect to see in schoolboy football.

Half-Time: Shepway 5 – 0 Ipswich .

At half-time player/manager Ben Hennon made a somewhat colourful and animated team talk, telling them their errors and where improvement was needed. Hennon also made a substitution which saw the out of form Scott Johnson replaced by Justin Earley, who pushed into midfield whilst Darren Hall went into defence and Peter Scrivener moved to left-wing, as Hennon attempted to play his preferred 4-4-2 formation.

The second half saw an immediate improvement in play as Town started to play their passing game and attacked with more purpose as they looked to get some sort of result from what was already a pride shattering game.

Then finally, just before the hour mark a break though was made; Michael Crowley raced through the defence, rounded the ‘keeper and tucked the ball neatly into the net for his 8^th goal in 5 league appearances.

Further chances came for Town as they looked to close the margin; this saw Scrivener with a superb long range shot that just went wide of the post.

Town not giving up were awarded a penalty when Flewitt was hacked at in the area. Hennon was quick to step up and take the penalty; he despatched it inch perfected into the ‘keepers bottom right corner, giving him no chance at making a save.

For the next 15 minutes Town continued to dominate the game, as the once again hunted for goals, but all this was to no avail, as they started to show signs of tiredness allowing Shepway to attack once again and scoring a future 2 goals past Akehurst.

When asked to summarise the Town performance Hennon said, “If only we’d played the whole game as we did for the first 40 minutes in the second half, then we could have came away with a point, however, one plus is we have now played everyone once and have scored in each game. This is a great achievement for our first 6 months as a club”.  

Final Score: Shepway 7 – 2 Ipswich .

Line-up – Akehurst, Scrivener, Peachy, Green, Johnson, W.Harvey, Hall, Flewitt, Row, Hennon and Crowley . Subs – Earley and White.