Surrey County Intermediate League (Western)

Saturday 14th December 2019

Kick Off 14.00 Actual 14.02

Hambledon 6 Cranleigh 0, attendance 37

15’ 1-0

21’ 2-0

44’ 3-0

51’ 4-0

80’ 5-0

82’ 6-0

@ Badger Park

Hambledon Road

Hambledon

GU8 4DL

No Admission or Programme.

With it raining heavily for most of Friday, and into the early hours of Saturday, it was once again going to be a challenge to avoid having to watch a match on a 3G pitch, with my first choice of matches rapidly joining an ever increasing list of postponed games, but thankfully, around 12 o’clock Hambledon tweeted that their match was on and despite being wet, the pitch was playable. On arrival, in what was now a sunny day, it was good to see the teams warming up on the pitch, rather than to the side, which was a good sign that it perhaps wasn’t too wet after all. It certainly helped that the pitch had a side to side slope, which meant it had drained quite well and the pitch looked very good. It did cut up in the centre circle, but otherwise it remained in very good nick.

Hambledon came into this top of the league table, although their two point lead over second placed Guildford United has been achieved from playing three games more, so they might not remain top for long. Cranleigh were only ninth in the table, but they put in a good performance here and the game was much closer than the score line suggests. The killer third goal, just before the break, finally saw the points safe for Hambledon, but Cranleigh competed well, with the real difference being that the hosts were far more clinical with their chances. The gap at the top of the table now stretches to 5 points, with Guildford United now having four games in hand over the leaders.