Metropolitan Police 0 Dulwich Hamlet 2

Metropolitan Police 0 Dulwich Hamlet 2
Ryman Isthmian League Division One South
Saturday 26th April 2008

Imber Court and a glorious end of season idyll amongst the manicured lawns and playing fields of the peelers. Imber Court, a strange haunt for beyond the blazered factotums of the Metropolitan Police, is there such a species as a dedicated Copper fan? It seems there is, a cantankerous pair reminiscent of the Muppets’ Stadler and Waldorf, standards Olympian-high and pinprick critical of their boys, whose thin blue line seemed paper thin against a Dulwich Hamlet who slashed and stabbed at its soft underbelly and might have rained down an embarrassing scoreline upon their humbled host ‘ere the day was spent. Little recompense was that for the Dulwich Hamlet supremo, Craig Edwards, who witnessed his charges rampaging all over the Met’s tenderly nurtured sward, their collars barely felt by a subdued long arm of the law, for though the Hamlet had finished the season at an almighty canter, their lolloping hosts had already long passed the finishing post and were already milling around at the start of play-off punch-up. Having dispatched Tooting with equal abandon a week earlier, the frustration at missing the invite to the post-season shindig was doubly painful for manager, player and fan alike.
The men in Pink and Blue were at full strength, bristling for action, the Met deliberately shorn of key players but still boasting enviable experience including the venerable on Daly who was signing off with his final regular season Isthmian League game before Father Time finally pinned him down, if not to pipe and slippers, at last to less rumbustious life. Not that the old reprobate was showing many signs of the gears seizing up! If only Messrs Stadler and Waldorf could find something as complimentary to say of some of Captain Indomitable’s colleagues, blessed with chances to stake their claim for inclusion in the starting line-up for the play-offs ahead but blessed instead with the burden of comedy. Barely a minute had elapsed and ‘keeper Mo Maan recklessly walloped a clearance off his own defender straight into the path of the marauding Meshach Nugent. Perhaps surprised at the gift, Nugent spurned the chance as he hooked the ball wide of the tottering Maan’s left-hand post.
Four minutes gone and hefty punt down the middle had the electric Charlie Taylor leaving defenders in his dust, clipping the ball over an advancing custodian but with a modicum too much of uplift, the ball clearing Maan but to his relief also Maan’s crossbar. A crunching Steve Sutherland tackle denied Nugent once more when he tore open another hole in a paper bag defence before Taylor slipped past a despairing Maan only for another of the old guard, Dave Newman, to nod the young striker’s effort off the line. The quicksilver Taylor was soon released tight right, rattling a low cross behind Nugent but met with the wallop of a steam hammer from Daryl Plummer, only for the ferocious drive to miss the target.
Assault on Precinct 13 sprung to mind as the boys in blue found themselves pushed back and trapped almost entirely in their penalty area. Maan found that extra inch to punch the ball from the head of Nugent as he went hunting for a Sebastian Schoburgh cross. 19 minutes on the clock and Dulwich finally had reward for all that effort or did they? As Taylor neatly tucked away Plummer’s delivery, fans celebrations were quickly curtailed by the flag of the assistant referee. Then the siege was lifted, albeit briefly as Dulwich, overcommitted in attack, were caught cold but Craig Carley, goalscorer supreme at Walton Casuals, found the hassling of Steve May too much as his shot went wide of the mark.
Maybe the skipper was frustrated at his forwards poor productivity, the chance to goal ratio still zero, but come the breakthrough it came from an unexpected source but a welcome one for Ryan Bernard had been instrumental in Dulwich’s late season revival, his constantly cajoling and encouragement lifting his compadres to heights most knew their could unachieved but had too often failed to touch. But to Bernard’s goal, a rasping screamer of a low drive as the ball was cleared to him after a bout of head tennis in the home goalmouth. A bullet of a low drive hit with such force from fully 30 yards out the ball was a blur to all even Maan, standing as if petrifying, as it rattled into the back of the net via the base of the upright.
Five minutes later and it was 2-0 as Meshach Nugent juggled a cross from Sebastian Schoburgh out on the wing, slamming a fierce volley home at the second attempt. By now Carley’s mid-half attempt had become but a fading memory, a rare oasis in a desert of Met Police opportunities. As if to rub that in Benson Paka powered on to a pass that had the home defence being eyed up by Madame Tussaud for a permanent exhibit, Maan their saviour as he bravely blocked the Hamlet man’s effort with an outstretched foot.
If the first half had sizzled the second merely simmered as the two clubs coyly toyed with each other, while the fans soaked up the late spring sunshine. Maan denied Taylor the chance to add to his burgeoning tally of goals when he reacted quickly to close down the angle and batter behind the prolific striker's 15 yard strike on the hour mark.
With a quarter hour left Andy Ottley missed the target from close as he got his head to a deep, deep to the back stick. The Police rallied late on though Jamie Lunan was rarely tested until the dying moments when one-time hero of the Hamlet, Jon Daly, almost marked his final game before succumbing to the demands of age and retiring from football with a goal, only for the agile Lunan to brilliantly batter away his late header.
However in the latter stage most excitement for the crowd came from guessing whom might fall foul of the man in black as Mr Laver spent the final ten minutes of the regular season, trying to push his quota of cautions up. Steve Potterill’s potty mouth earned him the first of these, a petulant Carley followed up for questioning the validity of an offside flag. Dave Newman’s attempt to try some old fashioned coppering as he tried to arrest the progress of Schoburgh failed to break the stone face of Mr Laver and it was a third caution for the Peelers. An over-exuberant late challenge from substitute Henry Darko earned Dulwich a yellow of their own but then whistle echoed playground bell. Schools out for summer!

Teams:
MPFC: Mo Maan; Steve Potterill; Michael Cobden; Steve Sutherland (Martyn Lee 26); Dave Newman; Scott Corbett (Andy Ottley 70); Leon Johnson; Steve Flinn; Craig Carley; Jon Daly (Capt); Steve Sargent (Gary Ansell HT)
Substitutes not used: Chris Meikle; Will Packham (GK)

DHFC: Jamie Lunan; Steve May; Billy Chattaway; Benson Paka; Ryan Bernard (Capt); Ricky Dobson; Sebastian Schoburgh; Stanley Muguo (Alex Martin 66); Meshach Nugent (Henry Darko 70); Charlie Taylor; Daryl Plummer (Kraig Rochester 77)
Substitutes not used: Sheikh Ceesay (GK)

Attendance: 148

Officials:
Referee: Mr A Laver
Assistant Referees: Mr M Ford & Mr C Hicks

Goalscoring:
1-0 DHFC Ryan Bernard 26th minute
2-0 DHFC Meshach Nugent 31st minute

Dulwich Hamlet 4 Tooting and Mitcham 1

Dulwich Hamlet 4 Tooting and Mitcham 1
Ryman Isthmian League Division One South
Saturday 19th April 2008

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!”

Tooting may have their seat on the play-off carousel, the Terrors may have the Cup Final but Dulwich will have this sublime victory, one to truly stir the heart as their deadliest rivals were subjected to their heaviest defeat of the season as their campaign reaches its final crescendo. Ever in charge throughout a first half where pink and blue waves crashed regularly on the shore of black and white defence but with only a single breach from the boot of Sebastian Schoburgh, the Hamlet had to weather a brief Tooting torrent following the prolific Paul Vines; shoddily conceded equaliser, before a team goal of infinite eminence restored their lead, Charlie Taylor starting and finishing a move that had the Hamlet hordes purring in delight. Further goals from Benson Paka and Henry Darko, both once of the rival Tooting faction, cemented victory, though unfortunately too late to keep alive those faint, fading hopes of bouncing above Worthing into an unlikely fifth place.

With that spot in the play-offs already secured and a London Cup Final mere days away one might have expected Billy Smith to give key players a well-earned rest but Billy is a street fighter cast from gunmetal and never one to shy from a challenge. QED, a XI bristling with the best of an Imperial Fields finest.

But then Smith’s counterpart in the home dugout comes from fighting stock too, Craig Edwards’ all-too-aware of the import of this contest to fans even to the exclusion of mattes of promotion and silverware, his troops rallied by stirring Churchillian words before the off. Beneath iron-grey skies those words still rang in the ears as Dulwich leapt off to a stunning start, a spark to light a tinderbox of a game. Four minutes on the clock and Schoburgh latched on to the ball in Tooting territory. Spotting Paka lurking wide on the left, he swung the ball out to the midfield dynamo before haring into the penalty to be the receiving end of the nattily chipped cross. Dave King between the sticks for the Terrors stood not an earthly as Schoburgh pulled the trigger on a rasping volley to rattle the ball into the embrace of the net.

Irresistible Hamlet drove on. Schoburgh legs a-blur as he danced with Tooting full backs, a able batman in Steve May behind him as cross after cross rained in across the face of King’s goal where Meshach Nugent and Taylor buzzed around like angry, flustering Tooting overworked central half pairing. Through the middle Paka, coiffured like a samurai, fought like one, perhaps enthused by a desire to show the travelling Tooting troops what they had once lost.

With the firebrand Allan McLeod within their ranks, a berserker who could start a fight in a phonebook and dismissed along with Stanley Muguo in Hamlet’s early season victory upon enemy soil, there was always the chance for the combustion that so marks these games to once more flare. However the afternoon’s first major flashpoint had neither protagonist within range as Schoburgh reacted angrily to a follow-through from Colin Hartburn, the defender dragging a boot down the back of the his opponent’s leg as he cleared the ball. The brief outburst betwixt the two gave the villainous-looking and theatrical Mr Meillack the perfect opportunity to flash the first brace of the afternoon’s cautions, though he spurned the chance to add to the mounting toll of red that these derbies engender.

Half a half had gone by before the Tooting troubadours had a chance to exercise their larynx’s in anger as a booming bomb of a delivery was nodded down in the path of Vines some distance from goal, the usually executioner somewhat wayward with a curling drive that drifted harmlessly wide of a diving Jamie Lunan’s right-hand upright. Not long after Paka’s storming run across the face of the penalty area was unceremoniously halted some 25 yards out but young Taylor was unable to craft suitable punishment as he clipped the ball over a wall, slowly creeping towards him but over the crossbar as well.

A curious caution for Vines, perhaps for vocal indiscretions rather than physical ones. Then Tooting threatened in quick succession through Romuald Bouadji, the burly Frenchman muscled aside his markers to meet a free kick bopped in by McLeod, only to be denied a Lunan leapt to tip the goalbound header over his crossbar. Bouadji was again in the thick of things as the corner was walloped deep across goal, met par la tête but over once more.

The relief of Mafeking as Tooting over committed themselves in attack leaving themselves vulnerable to a cavalry charge out of defence, in its vanguard Muguo, a brace of monochrome men on his trial. From twenty yards the Dulwich midfielder unleashing a steaming, dropping volley that seemed to have cleared even the behemoth of King until a hand stretched upwards to touch the ball over the net. Fruity words from Dean Hamlin, none too convinced that Muguo was onside when, he received the ball saw him added to the Master’s naughty boys list.

Dulwich were a eurhythmic euphony, a swirling symphony, drum marshals at the rear, pipers of pan in the van, leading befuddled adversaries a merry dance. First half over, second half awaited as a child awaits St Nicholas on a starry eve. It did not disappoint. A symphonic move as Alex Martin wove the midfield baton, swinging the ball out to Schoburgh in full flow down the right, inch perfect delivery to Taylor but not so the finish and ‘twas relief that the assistant’s flag would have nullified any goal. A corner forced moments later met by the head of Marc Cumberbatch, cresting his earthbound markers but plucked out of the air by the hands of King. Taylor, high octane charge down the left, cutting aside the leaden footed Hamlin before a ripper of drive bounced wide of the far post.

Then as to remind one of the fragility of man, the mortality of humankind came a Tooting equaliser, if not out of the blue as painful as a knife to the heart. Twice corners were repelled but then Jamie Byatt whipped in another, poor by past standards but deadly effective as the low ball was missed at the near post and the arch-poacher himself, Vines, hurtled in to hammer the ball into the roof of the net past a mortified Lunan. A spark ignited in one side, that same spark almost extinguished in the other as a Tooting tumult rattled the doors of the Hamlet defence. Dulwich rocked, Tooting rolled. Carl Hutchings latched on to the loose as yet another corner caused chaos in the area, the Tooting man swinging on the ball to whack in an angled strike that cracked against the near post with such ferocity it rebounded almost to the far touchline. Madcap McLeod marauding forwards produced a howitzer of a drive from fully thirty yards that brought the best out of Lunan as he battered the strike away. In disarray Dulwich came within a fraction of conceding a second as May and Lunan tangled under pressure from the hovering Vines, the ball squirming free to Jon Henry-Hayden but with the goal gaping before him like the gateway to hell, he hammered the ball upwards and against the underside of the crossbar from whence it bounced out, Lunan recovering his ground to punch the ball away as Vines thundered in hungry pursuit of the rebound. Dulwich prospects matched the lowering skies. May was cautioned as a crunching tackle laid out Jason Pinnock. But strange days as a substitution designed more to shore up defence proved the precursor for a second Dulwich score; Ricky Dobson replacing Martin and reclaiming his right back spot as Billy Chattaway pushed forwards. Seconds later Taylor began the move he would crown with a goal, slipping the ball out to Chattaway on the wing. A slide rule pass, neatly stepped over by Schoburgh and allowed to run to Nugent was craftily flicked wide of him by the forward, his almost physic understanding of his striker partner’s intention paying off in full as Taylor latched on to the pass, driving the ball low and hard towards the bottom corner of King’s net, even the giant hands of the ‘keeper unable to keep the ball from dribbling home.

“When woes come, they do not come as single spies, but in battalions”. Spots of rain, Tooting tears as rampant Hamlet added further goals to the tally, both from players deemed surplus to requirement at Imperial Fields. First from the samurai Paka, the tip of the blade of a nihontō that would slash a gapping wound in Tooting ranks. AWOL black and white defenders had no answer when Chattaway’s rifled pass across the park picked out Paka scampering into verdant space on the right, the midfielder larruping the ball past the exposed King. Though Vines would threaten twice with booming headers, the last bouncing mere millimetres wide of Lunan’s near post, the final word would belong to another of Tooting’s discards as Dulwich last pair of replacements, Kraig Rochester and Darko combined for number four. Only seconds remained when the ball was delivered low and hard across the six yard box by Rochester, taking on Schoburgh’s rapier role on the wing, the pocket rocket Darko hurtling in at the back stick to wallop the ball into the back of the net.

Even the news that Worthing had finally killed off those waning play-off hopes could not dampen the mood at Champion Hill for with Dulwich playing such mouth-watering football the summer break cannot pass fast enough.

Teams:
DHFC: Jamie Lunan; Steve May; Billy Chattaway; Benson Paka; Ryan Bernard; Marc Cumberbatch; Sebastian Schoburgh(Henry Darko 85); Stanley Muguo; Meshach Nugent; Charlie Taylor (Kraig Rochester 85); Alex Martin (Ricky Dobson 69)
Subs not used: Daryl Plummer; Sheikh Ceesay

T&MFC: Dave King; Dean Hamlin; Colin Hartburn; Romuald Bouadji; Carl Hutchings; Oliver Hunt; Allan McLeod; Jason Pinnock; Paul Vines; Jon Henry-Hayden; Jamie Byatt
Subs not used: Vernon Francis; Guilherme Lopez-Dacruz; Ben Abbey; Ryan Gray; Ronnie Green

Attendance: 431

Match Officials:
Referee: Mr Frank Meilack (Crowborough)
Assistant Referees: Mr Gareth Mays (Epsom) & Mr Adam Williams (Worcester Park)

Goalscoring:
1-0 DHFC: Sebastian Schoburgh 4th minute
1-1 T&MFC: Paul Vines 57th minute
2-1 DHFC Charlie Taylor 70th minute
3-1 DHFC Benson Paka 79th minute
4-1 DHFC Henry Darko 89th minute

Goalscoring:
1-0 DHFC: Sebastian Schoburgh 4th minute
1-1 T&MFC: Paul Vines 57th minute
2-1 DHFC Charlie Taylor 70th minute
3-1 DHFC Benson Paka 79th minute
4-1 DHFC Henry Darko 89th minute