Ashford Town visited Martyn Grove with a full squad prepared to do battle with a Lordswood team who were about to play their 5th game in 10 days. Compared to Ashford’s full squad though, Lordswood only had 12 fit players and the majority of those had attended the club’s presentation night the evening before – not the best preparation!

With a number of key players missing, Lordswood had to shuffle their players about leaving a few playing out of position including Morant being brought into central midfield to play alongside Slade.

The game began evenly contested, with Ashford looking to play a few balls over the top of the Lordswood defence centrally. They also looked to put pressure on from set pieces by packing out the penalty area. A few scares and a bit of luck saw half time come with the score at 0-0. Lordswood had to reshuffle again prior to this with Slade suffering a back injury on 25 minutes, enforcing their one and only substitution. On top of this, Lordswood’s prolific goalscorer, Jamie Govans had to be sacrificed out of position to fill the central midfield position left vacant by Slade’s injury.

Despite all this Lordswood still had a fairly balanced look about them, Prescott was trying hard and holding the ball up well. Indeed Lordswood were now looking the more likely to score, with Prescott hitting a drive over the bar from distance, Welch showed trickery to beat his marker before cutting inside and delivering a great cross that avoided everyone in the box and Chapman cut in from wide to have a free shot at goal, but his weak effort went straight at the keeper. The best chance then fell to Morant who got into the box and beat the last man but chose poorly with which foot to shoot with and ended up flicking the ball straight at the keeper with the outside of his right boot.

Ashford were generally repelling the Lordswood attacks and were playing some good football, comfortably passing the ball around the pitch leaving the Lordswood players chasing shadows. This began to show as concentration began to drift and the Lordswood midfield looking visibly tired. And so it showed that Ashford capitalised on Lordswood’s lapses of concentration and scored. Despite a brave last ditch tackle from Dampier and then Dodge trying to close the ball down in the area, too many other defenders stood and watched as the Ashford striker lobbed the ball home in the 88th minute.

“It was rough justice,” said Slade. “But that’s football. We had a lot of the ball in that game and had put on a good enough display particularly in the face of adversity. Morant and Govans had done their best in unfamiliar roles but were always going to tire. We had got the ball down and played football today, it was an OK performance and a lot more to be pleased about other than the scoreline. These lads have been a credit this year and there is no point in being upset , even though the last few games have been so disappointing and proved a few too far. It is very encouraging to see youth players win the presentation awards this year (Mark Rothery for the 1st team and Dan Delaney for the reserves) and that can only mean more opportunities for so many of ours next season.”