Wednesday 13th October

Captain's Corner

The romance of The Cup. For my first game in charge the draw had pitted us against the A Team. The last time this had happened to me, Lewisham Town A v Lewisham Town B in The London Cup, it had ended in a big punch up. Both teams promised to be on their best behaviour so there would be no recurrence of those 'disgraceful scenes'. Given the relative strengths of the two sides our aim had to be to avoid a 0-6 whitewash. Ruthlessly the A Team Captain had made this even more difficult by denying me access to any players within shouting distance of a possible future A Team spot as he didn't want anyone cup tied. It was going to be tough.  About half an hour into the match I took the opportunity to have a look round. Phil and Kev pulled faces at me. I took this as a sign of impending doom. The other boards told a similar story. For my part I had a decent position out of the opening, I played e4 to free my game, Mithun went into the tank and nearly forgot to come out. A couple of moves later I had a clearly winning position but Mithun managed to cause enough panic and confusion to secure a draw. Personally I was disappointed but the team had avoided the whitewash.