Spelthorne Step Up

Hopperational details
Date & Venue	Tuesday 5 August 2014 at Spelthorne Sports Club
Result	Spelthorne Sports 2 Bedfont Sports 1
Competition	Combined Counties Premier League (Step 5)
Hopping	Chosen as the nearest unvisited Step 5 ground to Chateau Yapp from this evening’s fixtures.
Pre-match preparation
Second game of the season for each side.  Spelthorne opened with an away win at Windsor whereas Bedfont drew at Badshot Lea.  Spelthorne were promoted from Step 6 last season and this will be their first home game under floodlights.
This match in one sentence
Spelthorne dominated the game and this was a deserved win even though they had to recover from a half-time deficit.
So what?
Six points from six from Spelthorne which can’t be bad, and too early to say after two away games for Bedfont.
The drama unfolds
Spelthorne took the game to the visitors and had plenty of possession but never made the visiting keeper work too hard.  I took a scene-setter clip after 25 minutes.  The Spelly are in pale blue. Surprisingly, it was half an hour before the ball was launched over the fence on to the adjacent A308.  I then noted an excellent Spelthorne defensive tackle from a rare Bedfont attack, and then a good heading chance at the other end.  They missed another good one and so it was rather against the run of play when a bouncing ball along the proverbial Route One fell nicely after the challenge to Adam Roberts who finished very nicely indeed.  The visiting keeper was then made to do some work almost immediately to protect that lead at the interval.  0-1 after 42 minutes and at half-time Spelthorne started the second half well and it was not long before they got level.  Lee Staples got to a flick-on just before the keeper and scored with a brave header.  1-1 after 54 minutes The winning goal came from a superb right-wing cross from Jesse Atiase, and it led to an unstoppable header from Simo Mbonkwi (I think, apologies if incorrect).  2-1 after 68 minutes The home side held on reasonably comfortably for the win and they will be delighted with the start of life in this division.  There is one more short clip as they went looking for a third goal.  Final score 2-1
Ground Pix
This ground is near to Heathrow and some busy skies! For the half-time official entertainment Look closely at the numbering which blows holes in modern number theory...
Match Pix
Something You Don’t Get in the Premier League
I noticed what appeared to be plumes of black smoke rising from some trees at the far end of the ground, but a closer look revealed that these were swarms of insects.  Millions of them, I should think.  Further post-match research has shown that they were most likely to be columns of male Chironomids, non-biting midges whose larval forms are known as bloodworms.  The males would be hoping to attract the attention of females, presumably from the direction of Staines in this case.  The second image is taken from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons licence.  Now stop that scratching.
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
The yellow of Spelthorne beats the radioactive bile of Bedfont. The story so far: 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw, -1pt for a goal conceded and +5pts for a clean sheet.  Grey and green doing well – the most popular and the most successful colours. P W D L GA (-1 each) CS (5 each) Pts Pts per Game Grey 14 7 2 5 15 5 33 2.36 Green 13 7 1 5 16 4 26 2.00 Red 4 2 0 2 5 1 6 1.50 Orange 4 2 1 1 6 1 6 1.50 Purple 2 1 0 1 6 1 2 1.00 Yellow 6 2 2 2 10 1 3 0.50 Blue 6 2 1 3 12 1 0 0.00 Radioactive Bile 5 2 0 3 9 0 -3 -0.60 Pink 7 1 3 3 16 0 -10 -1.43 Maroon 1 0 0 1 2 0 -2 -2.00
Soapbox Section
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What Next?
Watch @GrahamYapp on Twitter for details!