Ongar Town, after waiting around for WBB for 20 minutes whilst he popped into Tesco's to get himself a sandwich, without 4 key players, Ready, Flighty, Jeater & Lee Humphrey, finally made the trip to Manford Way on Saturday eager to put last weeks poor showing behind them. They arrived to find a superbly manicured pitch in excellent condition but there was a very strong wind blowing straight down the pitch 'goal to goal' which made the conditions a bit tricky for both sides.

Town won the toss and elected to go with the wind behind them first half. Straight from the kick off Manford closed Town down very quickly, giving them very little time on the ball and as a result of this Town found it difficult to get their passing game going and Way had the better of the opening phase of the game without creating any clear cut chances. Way’s two wide men caused Town a few problems, but fortunately, from Towns point of view, they over hit a few crosses from decent positions and their strikers were unable to capitalise. Wiggy was then on the receiving end of, shall we say, a robust challenge leaving him with a cut shin, just below the knee, and was promptly cautioned for arguing with the ref. Unfortunately Wiggy then committed another foul a few minutes later, that in my opinion was a foul, full stop, but the ref deemed it sufficient to warrant another booking so Wiggy was subsequently shown a red card and Town were down to 10 men after 22 minutes and facing an uphill struggle. To make matters worse Way then scored 2 goals in the space of 5 minutes just before half time to go in 2-0 up. So at half time Town could be forgiven for thinking that this wasn't to be their day; 2 goals down, down to 10 men and facing the prospect of having to play the second half against a strong wind; suffice to say things have looked rosier !!!!.

What followed in the next 45 minutes was simply outstanding as 10 man Town, simply refused to accept defeat and took the game to Way. After an initial spell of end-to-end stuff, Town, although not dominating as such, started to look like they could get back in the game. Andy Allen and Mark Neal started to dominate the midfield allowing Headon to play some probing passes and gradually Town were on the ascendancy and looked the most likely team to score. With 20 mins left a probing Headon pass resulted in a defensive mix up and Ben Polley latched onto the loose ball and won the race with the keeper to tap home from close range, 2-1. Headon and Newman, were withdrawn and replaced by Liam Murphy and Stuart Dallaway who both did a great job in keeping the impetus going. Mark Neal had a decent chance to equalise but his shot was straight at the keeper. Despite their Herculean efforts it looked like Town would run out of time, when, with a minute remaining, Polley picked the ball up 25 yards from goal and set of 'on a mazy', rounding a couple of defenders before being hauled down for a clear penalty, squeaky bottom time for Polley with literally seconds remaining, but he held his nerve superbly to score from the spot kick,2-2, to earn Town a well deserved point.

There were excellent second half performances from every Town player - Grandy, Ben Stone and Lodgey defended as though their lives depended on it, so much so that Chris Neal never had a save to make in the second half - Newman showed all his experience and just got the ball down and played it nice and simple whilst having to contend with Way’s right winger who was a real handful, Brad Merrick never stopped running and tackling and the team benefits greatly from his energy, Andy Allen and Mark Neal both gave inspirational 'up and at em' battling performances, Headon did what Headon does better than most and got himself on the ball and rarely, if at all, gave it away which took a lot of pressure of ; Ben Polley, up front on his own for most of the match, battled away superbly and still managed to cause problems despite being heavily outnumbered by 3 or 4 defenders most of the time and Liam Murphy and Stuart Dallaway, coming on for the final 15 minutes injected fresh legs that kept the believe alive. Whilst, in footballing terms, the team is capable of performing much better than this, the character and commitment in the second half against all the odds was both stirring and outstanding and I have rarely been prouder of them.

Player of the match this week is a close call between Andy Allen, Mark Neal and Ben Stone - Andy Allen covered every inch of the midfield and must have won what seemed like a thousand tackles, Ben Stone proved again what an outstanding prospect he is but Mark Neal just edges it for a simply outstanding 'up and at em never give up' skippers performance that inspired the team.

El Col