Cray Wanderers 2019-20 – That was the season that wasn’t – A pictorial review
Match 3 – 17/8/19 – Cray Wanderers vs Corinthian Casuals
Pictures: Kindly provided by Jon Hilliger
Cray Wanderers 0 Corinthian Casuals 0
Unusual for the 2019-20 season particularly the league games, this was quite a warm afternoon and despite much endeavour Cray couldn’t quite claim a winner in a goalless stalemate with Corinthian Casuals.
Cray who lost Tom Phipp to injury early on had the better chances on the day and Freddie Parker’s shot brought out a good save from keeper Dan Bracken’s feet and Joe Taylor placed a shot wide from just inside the box while for Casuals, Sitch had the ball in the net but was flagged offside and Serbonji lifted a shot just over the bar.
The second half picked up in the last quarter of an hour and Jerome Federico shot wide, Bradley Pritchard’s header went straight to Bracken, Tom Murphy hooked a volley just past the post and Charlie Allen steered a Murphy cross fractionally wide but it wasn’t to be but a second clean sheet of the season was achieved with Mitchell Nelson and Charles Etumnu outstanding.
Not much luck for Cray at this early point of the season and perhaps the three games deserved more points than were gained as well as injuries to Phipp, Jay Leader, Andre Coker and Karl Dent early on in the season was a headache. Cray were 18th in the admittedly still fledgling league table.
Cray Wanderers: Lewis Carey, Barney Williams (Capt.), Tom Carlse, Mitchell Nelson, Tom Phipp (Charles Etumnu, 10), Lee Lewis, Bradley Pritchard, Jerome Federico, Aaron Rhule (Tom Murphy, 69), Freddie Parker (Charlie Allen, 74), Joe Taylor: Subs: Karl Dent, Joe Vines
Att: 207
The Thoughts of Tony Russell
” We spoke after training that you go through a period like this sometimes as a club and every time someone goes down it looks like a serious knock and we’ve just got to get through it. I was happy with the way we played and we restricted them to very little if anything and we’ve missed two great chances and one maybe in the first half when we’ve slipped Joe Taylor in and dragged his left foot shot wide.
We’ve looked at the stats of all three games, we’ve controlled the ball and been on the front foot. I thought the Kingstonian result was about right, maybe didn’t do enough to win the game but certainly didn’t deserve to lose it. Folkestone and Corinthian Casuals we did enough to win both matches. At the moment just going through spells with people getting injured, missing chances and Folkestone had four shots on target and scored three. We’ve hit the bar three times against Folkestone and chances to go 3-1 up and against Casuals missed a couple of glorious chances. What we can’t do is feel sorry for ourselves, keep doing the right things as I think we are playing ok. We’ve got a spell where Phippsy is going to be out for 3-4 weeks, Jay Leader about 4 weeks and Andre is close but not sure when and just need to ride it out and when everyone is fit
We only have a 16 man squad this year but I’ve spoken to the owners and they’ve been brilliant in terms of their support and they’ve allowed us to see if we can bring definitely one, possibly two centre-halves with hopefully one sorted out in the next day or so. The difference so far to last season is that last year we found way to win games, this year we’re finding ways not to win and maybe not getting the rub of the green. If we keep creating the chances eventually we will start winning games”.
Following this game, Cray Wanderers made a couple of additions to the defence with Harry Hudson coming in on loan from Watford while Geofrey Okonkwo signed from Cray Valley PM.
Isthmian Premier League Results – 17/8/19
