Missenden Juniors (10/12/2000)
2000 - 2001 Season, Hithercroft Under 14s



The weather was very wet and the pitch was very muddy at the kick-off, the rain persisting throughout the game. This led to much slipping and sliding by the players and made turning very tricky.

Shortly after kick-off Missenden took the ball down the wing, cut inside and tried a shot on goal which Lee Hudson dived for and parried but the ball came to Matthew Bienkowski who then hit it into the net. Shortly afterwards another cross from the wing allowed Matthew to score again. However, about ten minutes later a passing move between Dewayne Dublin and Shane Globe resulted in the ball being passed back to Jerome Warren who fired the ball over the goalkeeper into the Missenden net from about 25 yards out. Christian Adams then scored from wide out following a Missenden corner. Just before the break Philip Lines had a good shot deflected onto the post by the goalkeeper and the ball rebounded for Jerome to hit it into the Missenden goal. The score-line at half time was 2-3 in Missenden’s favour.

In the second half a goal-mouth scramble at Hithercroft’s end resulted in David Jewel getting a goal for the visitors and soon afterwards the No 14 had a high shot superbly saved by Lee Hudson. Nick Hawkes scored the next goal for Missenden and then, whilst Hithercroft were down to 10 men with Adeel Iqbal being off the field following an injury, Christian Adams added another. Matthew Bienkowski completed the scoring for Missenden making the final score 2-7.
The conditions were very poor and had quite an effect on the game. Jason Guy and Lee Hudson reminded me of the claymen in an old ‘Flash Gordon’ adventure of the late 50’s as they ran around covered in mud.

Lee Hudson was made Hithercroft’s ‘Man-of-the-Match’ whilst Kevin Ife played well in defence once again.