Enfield Town FC

Report

Enfield Town 3-0 Concord Rangers 

Town Off To A Flyer
Report By Andrew Warshaw

As new eras go, they don’t start much better than this.

Missing several key players including Ollie Knight and Mickey Parcell, Gavin and the management team saw much of the pre-season work bear fruit as Town cruised to victory against opponents who were in Step 2 last season.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer and Town will have far greater challenges in the weeks and months ahead but you can only play what’s in front of you and the performance augurs well for the new style of play Gavin, Jon and the rest of the coaching staff are trying to implement.

For the first 15 minutes, however, it looked as if we might have a tough opening day baptism.

With just seconds on the clock, Town got lucky when they totally switched off at a free kick and Harrison Day saw his shot come back off the post.

Concord continued to press ominously and be first to the ball but once we settled down, we really looked the part and had wrested the ascendancy away from our visitors by the time we opened the score on 33 minutes with a textbook goal which apparently had been perfected in training.

A throw along the line was collected by Marcus Wyllie whose fabulous cross-field pass was expertly converted at the far post by the on-rushing Reece Beckles-Richards.

Marcus had already seen his overhead kick from a Sam Youngs cross fly inches over and three minutes after the goal, Town doubled their lead. Sam did what he does best, finding space on the edge of the box and latching on to a weak defensive header before lashing the ball home.

Concord were putting in some tasty challenges, none more than Fanion Sims on Scott Thomas which earned the Concord man a yellow card. Jake Cass, who otherwise had a powerful game as he continues to improve his fitness, also saw yellow for retaliation.

H-T 2-0

If the first 45 minutes were a half of two halves, so to speak, Concord hardly threatened thereafter.

Town might easily have had a penalty when keeper Lamar Johnson clattered into Wyllie while Cass saw a deflected effort bounce off the post.

With running out, Town made the game safe.  Wyllie nicked the ball off fullback luke Ige and as the visiting defence stood off expecting a foul to be awarded, Marcus ran on before supplying the sweetest of finishes.

Under the new stoppage time rules, 10 minutes were added which Town played out comfortably with excellent game management.

“I want to start by thanking our amazing support,” said Gavin afterwards. “You literally make the difference, we all acknowledge the level of passion you have for the club which massively helped drive us on.”

“I was very happy with the performance. Was it perfect? No of course not but I didn’t expect that. Probably the most pleasing thing apart from the result and the three goals is that Rhys hasn’t been troubled apart from that mad first minute when it was a total switch-off.”

“I think the wind helped them at first and kept us deep in the pitch but once we got a few messages out there, we gradually gained a foothold and never lost it.”

Town: Forster; Garcia-Velasco, Okotcha, Richmond Payne; Beccles-Richards (oulya-Osekanongo 74), Thomas (Bessadi, 89), Youngs, Adjei-Hersey; Wyllie, Cass