Surrey FA Saturday Premier Cup First Round
CHUFC 5 - 2 Tooting & Mitcham Utd FC
Goals: Bailey Ellis x2, Reece Tierney, Morgan Wright, Archie Morgan. 

I've taken to sending the players out as relaxed as possible and to play without fear as I had to look at my preparation first as to why we weren’t winning games but in the first half, I was beginning to regret my approach. We had spoken about our qualities and what we expected from Tooting and Mitcham and made it clear that we must be on the front foot and to make the game as uncomfortable as possible for our opponents by being good at the horrible part of the game. That couldn’t have gone any differently. We stood off them, allowed them time and space to play, and hardly got close enough to get a tackle in, and as you expect from a young enthusiastic under-23 side, when they saw our lack of fight they began to enjoy themselves. They passed round us at will and opened us up on several occasions and we were fortunate only to be 2 behind. We did have a couple of moments where we should have done much better but that’s the story of our offensive play at the moment.

The turning point came right on the half when in an isolated moment of good play Bailey reduced the deficit. 

The half-time address though wasn’t going to change and the players were told in no uncertain terms of their failings and given a very basic instruction for the second half - put the ball in the box!

2 minutes in we were level following Bailey's second goal and on the hour mark we had turned it right around going in front from a set play converted by Reece. It's always nice to score from a set play as we do put a focus on that. It was now finally one-way traffic and a fourth goal followed scored by one of our 16-year-olds who figured on the night in Morgan Wright and the final goal of the night came from another set play which went straight in from Archie's cross. I didn’t care if he meant it or not it was just nice to experience winning again.

I'm almost reluctant to say it but hopefully, this will prove to be the springboard for an improvement in our league form starting on Saturday when we are at home to Selsey.

Gaffer Glynn Stephens
First Team Manager

Thanks to Steve Carpenter @Scarpenter_67 for the photo on Twitter