It was League Cup action this week for Oatlands as we faced off against Egham Cricket Club. Egham play in the league below us, so they were a bit of an unknown quantity, but a brief glance at the league table suggests that they were going to be a strong outfit. The prize for the winners of this contest would be a quarter final against old rivals Staines Lammas.

As per usual there were changes to the line up this week due to players being unavailable for selection and we lost another player late on Friday night when own goal machine Ryan was called in to work to deal with a carpet tile related project.

This week’s squad Will, Bayno, Ross, Moo, Prycey, Tom BL, Sean, Pod, Joe, Jiz and Jamie. Jordy and Simon on the bench.

Prior to the game, all the signs pointed towards a physical encounter. The pitch was very small, the surface was clearly suffering from the recent weather and Egham were an aging and much physically bigger side than us.

Yet again we started badly and from the side it looked like we had listened to what Phil had to say and totally ignored it. Instead of imposing ourselves on the opposition, we stood off and allowed them to dominate. Phil asked for a high tempo to our passing, but we were too slow with the ball at our feet and failed to provide options for each other, and it was no surprise to find ourselves on the back foot early on.

It was Egham who had the first chance of the game when a duffed corner turned out to be a bit of a masterstroke allowing an Egham player time to take an early shot, luckily the ball was smashed against the bar to give us an early let off.

During the course of the opening 15 minutes, we were forced to defend stoutly against a determined Egham outfit and our own attacks were fairly sporadic, usually ending with Jiz getting caught miles offside against a very high Egham back four.

From early on in the game Egham were undoubtedly on the wrong end of some poor refereeing decisions as 50/50 challenges seemed to go in our favour and on a couple of occasions the referee pulled back the play to award them a foul when advantage was clearly the right option.

We took the lead after about 20 minutes and it was very much against the run of play. Baynezy broke down the right hand side and although he tried to claim otherwise, sliced his cross. As a result the keeper was caught flat footed and the ball looped into the net to give us a totally undeserved lead. 0-1 OFC.

After taking the lead, we continued to frustrate with our performance on the pitch. Countless passes went astray, we were diving to tackles and I don’t think we won a single header as Egham bullied us in midfield.

Despite our abysmal performance we soon increased the lead and it was again in controversial circumstances. This time Baynezy challenged for a bouncing ball in the Egham penalty area. As Baynezy tried to chest the ball, he was caught in the chest by a very high Egham boot and it looked like a pretty clear cut penalty. Unbelievably, instead of pointing to the penalty spot, the referee signalled for an indirect free kick on the corner of the 6 yard box. From the resulting free kick Pod layed it off to Ross who drilled the ball underneath the 3 man wall to make it 2-0 to OFC.

For much of the rest of the half Egham continued to dominate the game and we grimly held on to our lead. Egham did have chances but generally either wasted them or failed to properly test Will in our goal. Again they continued to find themselves on the wrong end of refereeing decisions and coupled with the frustration they were probably feeling about our most fortunate 2-0 lead, you could begin to see things threatening to boil over.

At half time Phil didn’t bother to give all the players a dressing down, because miraculously we were winning and surely things could only get better in the second half.

The second half started off in exactly the same manner in which we started the first half, basically failing to implement or carry out any of the instructions that Phil had given. We were disorganised in midfield, still failing to win ball in the air and our passing was just as poor as it was in the first half.

From the side it seemed like it would only be a matter of time until we conceded, but although Egham got themselves in some great positions, we either stuck a boot in right in the nick of time or Egham simply failed to find the target as shots flashed across the goal or were blazed over.

Again our attacks were few and far between and when they didn’t end with the offside flag being raised, we would choose the wrong pass when pouring forward in numbers to put our own defence under massive pressure.

As the game continued the tackles from both sides were flying in, and again much to the building frustration of the opposition we continued to get the rub of the green from the ref. The yellow cards for both sides were now starting to come out with alarming regularity and it looked like it would only be a matter of time until one of the teams was reduced to 10 men.

Midway through the second half the home side got the reward their efforts deserved. A perfect cross was whipped in from our left hand side and the unmarked Egham attacker was first to the ball with a glancing header that flashed past Will and into the side netting. 2-1.

Having got their goal back Egham upped the pressure and upped the chat on the pitch and we were beginning to find ourselves fending off wave after wave of attacks.

Things were going to become even more difficult when OFC were forced into making a change. For the umpteenth time this year, Tom Pryce pulled up lame in the left back position and with no defenders on the bench we were forced to play a 3-5-2 to accommodate the forced change with Mark Jordan coming on to make up a 3 man central midfield. But even with the change their colossal no9 continued to dominate the central area and was now beginning to give the OFC supporters plenty of banter in the process.

With 15 minutes left we conceded again. It was another cross from the left hand side and again it was an Egham head on the end of it. This time it was to the back post and a straightforward header from no more than 6 yards out. 2-2.

With the teams now level Egham’s no9 was now taunting the OFC supporters and with good reason as it looked like there would probably only be one winner from here, but directly from the kick off we put just about our only decent passage of play together and a 6-7 pass move from OFC sliced through Egham like a hot knife through butter. Jiz was put clean through on goal but just as Jiz was about to pull the trigger a last ditch tackle cut him down and OFC were awarded a penalty. Despite an Egham defender being virtually next to him as he struck it, Ross hit a perfect penalty which evaded the keepers finger tips by inches. 3-2 OFC.

The last 15 minutes were manic. Both teams went down to 10 men when Pod got injured in a tackle and an Egham player was bizarrely sent off moments later. Again to compensate, we had to bring Simon into the midfield from attack and leave Jiz up top on his own.

We didn’t do ourselves many favours during the closing minutes as we continued to make silly mistakes like diving into tackles in and around our own box, often passing the ball to the opposition and at one point we decided to completely stop playing while we waited for the referee to blow his whistle for what we thought was a foul. Spooner also had a moment of total madness when he sold Ross short with a throw in that sent Egham racing through on goal. Again, the referee courted controversy, this time we broke out of defence and found ourselves in a 3 on 1 situation, but our attack and chance to score was ridiculously denied by a referee who bought the play back and awarded us a foul for a nothing challenge in the build up when playing the advantage was the common sense decision.

In the final 5 minutes Egham undoubtedly had chances to score. With about a minute left they hit the inside of the post and the ball rolled agonisingly (for them) across the line where any touch would have seen it go in. Then in the last passage of play in the game a cross came in from the right and an Egham player headed it goalward only to see his header strike the backside of his team mate on the line. Then despite having time to pick his spot, he blasted miles over the bar, summing up their day.

Overall it was a poor performance by us and realistically Egham probably would still have felt robbed if the match had ended in a draw after 90 minutes, such was their dominance. From our perspective it was great to get through despite such a weak performance and although nearly everyone played badly, we kept on fighting and worked hard to try and compensate for each others mistakes.

The victory takes us through to the Cup Quarter Final where we play our old rivals Staines Lammas. Staines may have gone down last year but they have bounced back impressively and are unbeaten in the league this season. Given our past encounters with Staines, this one is bound to be a hard fought and exciting encounter.

Up next for us is FC Shepperton at home. We drastically need to up our game and hopefully we should have a few players back to bolster the squad. We may even see the timely return of highly influential central midfielder Mike Taylor who is due to return from a spate of global travel in the next few days.

A big thanks to all the OFC fans who came down to support.