Chessington & Hook United 1 vs 3 Windsor

With the tie originally scheduled for Stag Meadow, Windsor’s floodlight problems saw the tie switched to Chalky Lane giving us the home advantage.

The opening ten minutes was frenetic with Windsor dominant and quicker than us all round the pitch and with two changes at centre half and Michael Sharpe returning in goal we had to be at our best defensively to keep them out.

The pace that they brought to the start of the game couldn’t be sustained and to be fair although on the back foot early on we weren’t massively troubled, aside from a couple of long throws that we did well to deal with.

On our first attack on the Windsor goal we scored. Ellis’s corner was swung in under the crossbar and the visiting keeper under pressure from Ryrowski could only parry his attempted punch straight up in the air, where Chris Davidson climbed highest to nod home.

The goal certainly settled us and we became more composed as the game went on although we rarely threatened the visitor’s goal in open play.
Our best opportunities coming from a series of free kicks and corners that we were able to deliver into dangerous areas at least asking questions of the under pressure keeper.

Windsor themselves could count themselves unfortunate not to score as there own openings were certainly more clear-cut than ours. However there poor finishing let us off the hook.

At the break it was a difficult game to call. We had the lead, the visitors perhaps should have been at least level but unquestionably we had improved as the half went on and had every reason to be optimistic of winning the tie.

At the start of the second half we looked quite bright and the scrappiness of the game suited us as our opponents struggled to match the intensity of their opening to the first half. We were the better side at this stage and will look to a couple of key moments ten minutes after the restart that changed the course of proceedings.

Both Aaron Leacock and Matt Ellis were replaced in a double substitution that had the effect of slightly unbalancing our structure and whilst their replacements, Dan Coombes and Jordan Oldershaw were equal to them in performance we seemed to lose our shape.

Despite this we had a great opportunity to increase our lead with Cameron Goff taking advantage of a defensive slip to break clear only to hesitate when well placed to shoot and in the end securing nothing more than a corner.

Ironically from this we conceded. A comfortable catch and a huge punt forward causing confusion between Davidson and debutant Teon Haywood resulting in an easy finish to draw Windsor level.

The game remained quite even despite this setback and with it becoming more and more open both sides had chances to take the lead. Unfortunately Windsor got the goal capitalising on some loose play in midfield by us and the resulting move was smartly finished as their front man peeled away from his marker.

Un phased by the goal we pushed for an equaliser but with little over ten minutes to get back into the game we had to throw caution to the wind and that left us open at the back. Neil Wickes had the ball in the net but that was chalked off for a correctly awarded offside and Ryrowski hit a speculative shot just wide.

The game though was sealed in the final minute when a misplaced pass gifted possession to Windsor and with little defensive cover as we had pushed on in search of a goal ourselves we were easily punished to put the game beyond reach.