Happy week of valentines *blowy kissy face* hope you had a good one. Three fixtures this weekend. The 3s and Vets are out of action and as per the match report below the 3s using the time of to overcome the first defeat of the season :( (noting the return of Lillis and Williams but I am not judging).

Please note the 4s fixture has been amended due to Tooting being called off (unbelievable I know) already due to bad weather and will now be played at
Venue: Football Pitch 1 (Grass Pitch), Wandsworth Park, Putney Bridge Road, London, SW18 1PP

Luke
#COXA4Life

A further Public Service Announcement on behalf of the Club and in hope rather than expectation of some take up but to be honest it's a good deal if you are interested:

Dear AFC southern area ....club secretaries and fixture secretaries...

We are on a mission...myself, Harry Hutchings (Southern area Ref Sec) and Roger Brown (Referee) have been working closely together to extend our ref numbers with reasonable success.......Ref societies and Sunday league colleagues have been forthcoming but our main program is just about to start.

The AFC have negotiated a referee course reduction with the AFA & we have secured funding from the Executive Committee to be able to organise and run a Referee Training Course for the reduced price of £100 per candidate. This course (run by the AFA) will be open to AFC clubs only, as many of you have non qualified club refs or players, who will interested in adding something back to the league as a referee.

The AFC Executive Committee will refund £50 to the payee once they have :-

Successfully completed of the referees training.
refereed the mandatory six games as part of the referees course
Joined the AFC Referees panel thereby committing to refereeing on the AFC as part of our referees panel (refereeing at least 10 games in 18/19).
·

In essence you get to become a qualified referee for just £50, a saving of between £80 or £100 with other counties current rates. The course will be held at Old Suttonians FC on two consecutive Saturdays with classroom and field work over both days. In addition there will be one evening in between the two Saturday's. Once we have the numbers we can arrange the dates for the course.

SO WHAT NOW:-

We require at least 10 but preferably 20 candidates to put their names forward to undertake this excellent initiative. Our aim is to have all fixtures in the AFC covered with qualified referees in 2018/19, we can only achieve this with your help. So I am asking you as Club Secretaries to send this email to all club members & referees, plus anyone else you feel may be interested within the club. I am asking that all those wishing to partake, to just email me with their name, email address and club please. Obviously we can arrange more courses if numbers dictate. Once we have the required numbers I will secure the booking, ask for the payment to register the individual on the course.

Please help us to help you!

3s Match Report
Wandsworth Borough 3's 2-1 COXA 3's

Joe McLoughlin, Stan Christoforou, Dom Taggart, Liam Thornton, Karl Velinor, Callum Downer, Harry Downer, Steven Lillis, Ben Dakin, Tom Macgregor, Luke Michael. Rich Williams, Louis Keable.

The run is over. After winning 10 and drawing 2 of our opening 12 games we finally suffered defeat at the hands of Wandsworth. If I'm being honest, it was coming. The past few weeks have been really disappointing, a few weeks ago it seemed as though we were going to smash our way to a league title, breaking records along the way, but it appears that a few people have lost the hunger, and a few think the league is already won, this complacency and arrogance leads to results such as losing 2-1 to Wandsworth (one of the poorer teams in our league) after only having 7 regulars available. I'm hoping this result will make a few people wake up and realise that we need them, we need every last one of them if we are going to win the league, it is by no means over.

Anyway, we began the game brightly, the pitch was slippery and muddy and tearing up by the minute so there were a few bad touches and overhit passes but overall I feel we adapted to the conditions well and had a decent first half. We put a couple of nice passing combinations together in the middle of the park and managed to work some space for our wide men Tom and Callum. Tom looked particularly dangerous, he has been out for a few weeks and looked hungry for a goal. He had the oppo RB on toast and on two occasions cut in and let a blistering shot fly but both times he was denied by the woodwork. We knew that Wandsworth were an ageing team and liked to play with men behind the ball, they were crunching into tackles and winning their headers but when we managed to work the ball in behind the fullbacks they looked all at sea. The back four looked in control and I never felt like conceding in that first half, even with Jeffrey Schlupp at LB. We were calm at half time, we knew we had played better than in previous weeks and knew the goal was coming.

The second half began and I really couldn't see any other result but a Clapham win. Unfortunately though, when you have Stanni at RB there is always a chance that he can produce one of those moments that will be on channel 5 programme named 'football's worst mistakes' or something of the sort. So duly I delivered. The ball was played in between me and keeper Joe, and I subtly glanced it back to him for him to clear it downfield, however, Joe had gone one way, and I had played the ball the other way... and then he slipped... and then we watched the ball slooooowly spin just inside the inside of the post. Classic. But this was only 5 mins into the second half, we had 40 minutes to carve open the oppo defence and put 2/3 even 4 past them as we have done previously. Instead, we decided to shit the bed, it was panic stations, people couldn't put two passes together, we lost our structure and rather than looking like equalising, the oppo looked like scoring again and running away with it. With half an hour to go we gifted them a soft goal and found ourselves two goals down. No one could really believe what was happening. We went close to getting one back shortly after and the boys swear to me the ball crossed the line but this match report has enough salt in it without me dwelling on a refereeing decision. We did finally get one back through a pen which was dispatched by Lil. But time eventually ran out and without top scorer Jacob and last years top goal scorer Sam, we looked abit short of firepower. It wasn't meant to be.

No time to sit around and sulk though, this run has come to an end which means another run begins next week, I'm not looking to lose any more games, in fact I'm not looking to draw any more games, its time to step up now and put this league title to bed.

Up the Clapham.