The Walking Footballers were delighted to attend the Millwall Community Trust football event on Saturday held in aid of Cancer charities. There were teams from London in the main plus our friends from Chatham Town who we meet regularly in Kent league fixtures.
In our first game, we came up against Pimlico and whilst dominating the game completely, their goalkeeper performed heroics keeping out our frequent shots on target and giving us a disappointing 0-0 draw.
Downham were our next challenge and we took an early lead with a goal from Nigel Bragg. But a quick response from Downham put the score at 1-1 until Gordon Ramsay produced a ‘worldie’ from his own half into the top corner giving us a lead and enabling us to control the game. However we began to realise at this point that Walking Football rules we are used to were not being employed here and with some very fast running Downham scored an equaliser. Despite our protests, the goals were allowed and the game finished level.
Having discussed the rules again with the officials we understood that walking only applied to the team in possession and the opposition could “run off the ball” which whilst not in the spirit of Walking Football certainly created a new dynamic.
In our final game, we met our hosts Millwall. This was an end to end game disrupted by the running rule but after losing an early goal Steve Elliott and Nigel Bragg put us 2-1 ahead. When Martin Brindley added a third all seemed to be going our way, but Millwall turned the tide bringing on two ex professional players. Martin Brindley put us 4-2 ahead before a reply from Millwall but we held on to reach the semi finals with a 4-3 win.
The semi-final was against Paddington, who were clearly the fastest guys in the tournament and not a walking football team. We took the lead early on when Kelvin Champion’s shot trickled through the goalkeepers legs and we had total domination of the ball for almost the entire game. One small slip up at the end gave Paddington the chance to score an equaliser to bring extra time. Again we were in control and had plenty of shots on target all saved by a very good goalkeeper. And then out of the blue a substitute came on and swung his leg to fire a rocket shot past Jim Dalton and give Paddington a slot in the semi-final under the golden goal role.
We met Downham again in the 3/4 playoff and simply could not keep up with the pace they were employing. A disappointing two nil defeat at the end but we have been delighted to contribute to these worthy charities and meet new teams.
Report from Glyn Hollands
Front Row L-R: Martin Brindley, Craig Knowles, Steve Elliott, Alan Kane
