National League U19 Alliance

League Cup 2nd Round

Wednesday 20th October 2021

Kick Off 12.00 Actual 12.08

London Tigers U19 0 Eastleigh Yellows U19 15, attendance 8

@ Spikes Bridge Park, 3G Pitch

West Avenue

Southall

UB1 2AR

No Admission or Programme.

This game was so typical of what you get in this league and is a reminder why I don’t bother with it very much. The only attraction today was that I wouldn’t have to waste a Saturday afternoon coming here to do a Middlesex County League match in a cage and the noon kick off meant the battle with traffic on the M25 coming home should be a little easier than if it was the normal 2 o’clock start.

Typically there was the late kick off. They couldn’t get a Ref, so it was refereed by one of the London Tigers officials, and the home team only had 10 players at the start and their ‘keeper looked like he had never played in goal before. He was probably injured as well, as not one of his kicks from out of his hands managed to reach the centre circle in the entire match. Needless to say, we ended up with the obligatory mismatch. It is hard to see what Eastleigh would have got out of this apart from a place in the next round of the cup, but they were ruthless and didn’t even get out of second gear.

Surprisingly, after 40 minutes it was only 0-4 and Tigers even played the last few minutes of the half with a full compliment of eleven, a late arrival making up the numbers. By the hour mark it was 0-6 and Tigers were shortly back down to 10 men when they lost a player to injury. Double figures was hit with ten minutes left, before a further five goals came in the last eight minutes. Not a great watch, but at least the rain stayed away. Despite there being no official spectator area it was no problem standing inside the cage to watch.