Chatham Town 4 – 3 Dover Athletic
Todays fixture was an exciting 2nd Round Kent Cup draw between two established teams. Dover were without captain Alfy Galvin, Central Midfielder Charlie Corrigan, Defensive Midfielder Ant Page and Striker Ben Cassengena.
Dover begun the first half rather sluggish, they were second to the ball, being overrun by a Chatham Town team who had clearly been drilled on a high attacking line with a focus upon attack. Within the first ten minutes Dover found themselves 2-0 down. After 20 minutes, Dover had settled down and begun to play their style of high pressure, attacking football, Chatham were barely able to compete. Dover had a string of decent opportunities whereby both strikers and several midfielders had attempts on goal, Max Brunetti-Leach coming close on another occasion hitting the woodwork. A rare breakaway from Chatham towards the end of the first half saw them go into the interval 3-0 up.
The second half, Dover begun with purpose, applying pressure all over the field and were immediately rewarded with a well taken free kick conversion from Kyle Miller, fantastic strike from 30 yards. From here on Dover were in full control, within 10 minutes Liam Jones got on the score sheet for the second week running with a well taken shot from inside the box. At this point, Dover looked like they would go on to win the game convincingly. However, on 60 minutes Chatham’s left winger was forced out into the corner area, in a non dangerous position, however he managed to turn the Dover right back inside out and then slotted home with a scrappy finish into left bottom corner. Dover never gave up and continued to pressure the opposition creating several more changes which were not converted. On another day this would have been a convincing Dover win. With 10 minutes to go a Dover corner deflected in to the Chatham to make it 4-3.
Final Score Chatham Town 4 – 3 Dover Athletic.
Manager Comments:
The first half wasn’t good enough for the third from seven games so far this season. As soon as we settled down we once again showed there is not a team who can compete with that, but by this time we were already 2-0 down chasing the game.
The second half was the best 45 minutes we have played this season, completely in control, just unable to punish Chatham. Had we converted anyone of the 13 shots we had today it would have been a very different score line. However, we also got to accept we had 4 first team players out including our captain these were all big losses.
Next week we go again looking to gain another three points.
