Leatherhead 7 Whitstable Town 1
By David Pritchard
Whitstable Town manager Mark Munday is not planning on much of a team talk ahead of Wednesday evening’s crunch relegation six-pointer at Ashford Town following his side’s thrashing at Leatherhead on Saturday.
The Oystermen suffered their heaviest defeat of the season at the weekend, conceding six goals in a 25-minute spell either side of half-time.
It was the last thing struggling Town needed heading into the against rock bottom Ashford at Homelands, but Munday is expecting a very different score line.
He said: “There won’t be any need for a team talk, the reaction should come from within. We’ve done well against Ashford in the past and it’s not as if they are on a good run, it’s a long time since they’ve won. We need to get at them, keep it tight and hopefully get the rub of the green.”
The bare facts of the game on Saturday give a very one-sided impression, but the Oystermen had cause for complaint early on as they had two goals harshly disallowed. Munday got both of them, the first chalked off for off-side, the second for a foul on his marker. Tellingly on both occasions there was no protest from the Leatherhead players or supporters.
In between the disallowed goals Leatherhead opened the scoring, when an unmarked Marc Elston slammed home past Kevin Fewell.
Town still carried plenty of attacking threat and had another two efforts cleared off the line. It was a very different story at the other end, where everything Leatherhead touched turned to goals. They doubled their lead ten minutes before the break and they netted two more on the stroke of half-time to go in 4-0 up.
The misery continued as the Tanners added three more goals before the hour mark to go 7-0 up. Whitstable did at least grab a consolation, through Gareth Cornhill’s free-kick eight minutes from time.
With most of the goals coming from central midfield, Munday conceded he should not have picked himself, but insisted in hindsight it was the only thing he would do differently.
He said: “It was possibly a wrong decision playing myself, I wasn’t the best and I’ll hold my hand up. It was possible a pitch for a younger man, who might have been able to get closer.
“I don’t think they will have another game like it, it was just one of those days where everything they did went in. We were 100 per cent better than we were against Chatham the week before and we almost got a point from the game.”
Munday will not have long to wait until seeing his side’s reaction. Log on to www.yourcanterbury.co.uk on Thursday for details from the game with Ashford.
POSTED: 08/02/2010 15:45:51
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