Enfield Town 3 Dover Athletic 1

Report by Martin Bentley

In a night full of surprises, Enfield Town bagged a much-needed three points thanks to three excellent goals against a decent Dover Athletic side to end a seven-game winless run.

 Surprise number one, to the delight of an amazed Town faithful, was the appearance of one Jake Cass among the substitutes for his first game in two years, having come out of retirement to rejoin the club until the end of the season.

The announcement palpably lifted the mood behind the goal as Town’s battle against relegation took a decided turn in our favour.

  Before the fun started, we had to endure half an hour of turgid, shapeless scrapping. The better chances fell to the visitors, with Joe Wright forced to save well from efforts by the dangerous George Nikaj and George Wilkinson’s free kick.

Nikaj was also guilty of fluffing a good chance on 24 minutes, but the game swung in Town’s favour late in the half. Sam Youngs stung the palms of Dover keeper Mitch Walker on the half hour before putting Town in front seven minutes later, shooting first-time from the edge of the box after Ollie Knight’s cross was partially cleared.

H-T 1-0

Although grateful to be leading after an indifferent first-half showing, Town then took control of the game three minutes into the second half.

With the advantage of a strong end-to-end wind, Wright’s long drop-kick cleared the Dover centre backs for Lamar Reynolds to race clear and lob over Walker from the edge of the box (pictured). Remarkably, this was Lamar’s first goal since January.

Wright was once again called into action on the hour with a decent save from a freekick before Town made the game safe on 75 minutes with an absolute belter of a goal. Youngs began the move in the right-back position, carried the ball out of defence before playing Reynolds in 20 yards from goal. His return pass to the onrushing Youngs — and Town’s in-form midfielder once again hit Walker’s bottom corner with a sweet strike.

  The rest of the game saw Town successful play out time, with DeCarrey Sherriff’s consolation effort passing almost unnoticed at the other end. Well actually, the main reason that it was unnoticed was the weather; the steady drizzle that had started in the first half was suddenly replaced by the mother of all downpours which, combined with the wind, caused absolute mayhem in the crowd behind Walker’s goal.

Supporters cowered at the back of the stand trying to hide behind each other, at which point we realised that too many of us wear glasses! Cassy appeared for a five-minute cameo to perk everyone up.

His first involvement saw him dumped unceremoniously onto a very wet running track (didn’t happen too often in Dubai where he now lives, I assume), but he whizzed around enthusiastically for the remaining minutes to leave us all in a thoroughly good mood. And then the rain stopped.

 All good news, and a pleasingly emphatic win. Now we need to build on it, with high-flying Worthing visiting the Dave Bryant on Saturday.

Team: Wright, Benjamin (Traore 49), Odom-Malaki, Appiah, Hawkins, Bullas (Leonard 79), Parcell, Knight,Youngs, Andrews (Cass 90+1), Reynolds

Unused subs: Connolly, Donaldson, Lambert, Ackason