Dover Athletic U13s were made to work very hard to maintain their 100% record as the travelled to Cray Wanderers in the Kent Cup. The game started badly when the referee failed to show up. It got worse when the stand-in referee inexplicably awarded the home team a penalty after ten minutes. There were no appeals from the home players or managers, and it seems that the only person who thought Charlie Bell actually handled the ball was the referee, who was standing behind the guilty player and had no clear view of the incident!
The penalty was calmly slotted past the outstretched hand of keeper Freddie Marsh to put the home team 1-0 up.
The penalty seemed to shock the Dover players, and they struggled to get to grips with the game in the first half. If it wasn’t for two or three outstanding saves from the excellent Marsh Dover would have found themselves trailing by a larger margin at half time.
Somehow the boys managed to get through to half time without conceding again, but came out as a different team in the second half. Within minutes they had found the equaliser. Marsh fired a long kick downfield which Tyler Watson latched onto. He hooked the ball over the onrushing ‘keeper, and collected it himself on the other side before firing into an empty net.
Dover found themselves in front after a flowing move. Ned Odlin eventually picked up the ball in midfield and played a great pass in behind the defence for Watson to run onto again. His left footed shot beat the ‘keeper, but a covering defender looked as if he might clear it before Ason Limbu won the footrace to tap in to put the visiting team ahead.
That was the end of the scoring, although both teams had other chances to find the net. Marsh in the Dover goal, however, was defiant and made several more outstanding saves to earn his team a passage to the next round, and himself the man of the match award.
