ORANGE WEDNESDAY

KENTISH TOWN V WELWYN GARDEN CITY
Match played on Wednesday 21st September 2011

The Copthall Athletic’s Stadium was the venue for Wednesday night’s Spartan South Midlands League Division One clash between Kentish Town and Welwyn Garden City.

It has been home to Kentish Town FC since 2007 with the future of the stadium subject to redevelopment proposals from Saracen’s Rugby Club who have submitted planning applications for a 10,000 capacity venue. see bbc.co.uk link here

Both clubs have struggled of late with The Citizens being relegated from the Premier Division at the end of the 2009/10 season and The Townies following them at the end of last season. Kentish’s club Chair Person Catherine Dye states in her programme notes ‘Recent results have been not good but we are determined to continue with our youth policy and I know that this will reap benefits long term.’

Going into the game Kentish had won three of their nine league games against Sun Postal Sports (1-0 @ H), Hoddesdon Town (4-3 @ H) and at bottom of the table Bedford (1-2 A) but they had also leaked goals at a rate of 3.88 per game suffering a 6-0 defeat in their last game at Cockfosters the previous Saturday.

Kentish manager John Creith states in his notes ‘I have a lot of hope on Saturday as the day started and was looking for a good performance. But what I got was far from it! For the first half we competed well, but in the second half we just lay down and gave Cockfosters the game!’ & ‘What I expect from my players is a lot of heart, passion, desire and work rate’ & ‘we have an opportunity to put in a more improved performance tonight.’

The Citizens, who the cold end has now seen play a number of times this season, are obviously looking to improve on last season which ended in relegation and going into the game had won 2 of their 9 league games. They had lost 4-0 at Kings Langley on the previous Saturday. What is sad is that for team representing a Town with a population of over 40,000 their current average league home crowd is just 47. It is good to see that this is an improvement on last season's 29 average with the people behind the scenes at the club working very hard to promote The Citizens.   

The game was a very entertaining and eventful affair with both sides playing some good football. One of the 26 people who attended was very vocal in his support of WGC and raised a chuckle when shouting out ‘COME ON WELWYN...ORANGE WEDNESDAYS!! TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE’ in a nod to his side’s rather bright away kit.

Catherine Dye seems to be spot on when she talks about her club’s youth policy as their young goalkeeper in particular performed excellently throughout the match.

Extended match highlights are below including all the action. Please check out the open goal miss (from 6mins 49secs on the video) that a WGC player had right at the end of the game which caused the shout of ‘HAVE WE SIGNED TORRES?’ from the stands. This may have been a little harsh on the Citizen’s player!!