Greenwich Borough retain their third place in the Ryman One South table tonight following a comprehensive 3-0 victory at Maidstone Road over Chatham Town, who remain four points away from safety in the bottom three.
Despite Greenwich dominating the possession, it took until the 42nd minute before Mo Eisa drilled a low shot under Alex Hyde to give the visitors the lead. Thirteen minutes into the second half, Danny Young’s cheeky backheel through a crowd of players doubled their advantage and Liam McDevitt rounded off the scoring on 73 with a drive from the edge of the box.
That, though, wasn’t the biggest story of the day, which occurred two minutes later. Chatham’s Moses Ashikodi had entered the game after 66 minutes replacing Luke Medley. Before play could restart from Greenwich’s third goal, Ashikodi walked off the pitch, pushing teammates and coaching staff away from him to leave Chatham with 10 men to see out the remaining 17+ minutes.
Both managers admitted they had never seen anything like this before, but Greenwich’s Gary Alexander was full of praise for how his players had controlled the match. He said “it was a good performance on not an easy surface. I thought we passed the ball well, dominated the game and thoroughly deserved the three points.”
“We speak about being patient – you can’t score with every attack – but we tell the boys to wear teams down and we scored at the right time. It was a first half we deserved to lead. We’ve struggled to put teams away this season, but second half we controlled the possession and we hurt Chatham with our possession. We’ve kept a clean sheet as well, which we haven’t had enough of this season, so I’m delighted.”
For new Chatham manager, Paul Pigott, in only his second game in charge, he was able to take some consolation in the determination shown by the 10 men who finished the game. He admitted “with all the ups and downs over the last week, and the situation that occurred today, the boys never stopped running. When you’re struggling, it’s easy to hide in a game of football, and they didn’t. I’m happy with the commitment they showed me.”
“We’ve been to watch Greenwich play and knew they would have a lot of possession in their own third, they looked comfortable but couldn’t hurt us there. We’re too early here to start looking to press to high, so we were looking to stay tight in our area. They had a lot of possession, but the goal came at the wrong time.”
“We are always looking to be in the game at half-time, and up to their goal we were. We know we’ve got work to do here, but I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen. We wanted to make positive moves to get back into the game, but making that move when we were two down, we were possibly a little too bold. If we’re going to lose, we at least going to be trying to get something out of the game.”
Chatham almost caught their visitors cold within the first minute. Ricky Freeman picked up a hopeful ball in the middle of the Borough half and ran at former Chatham defender Liam Hickey, before firing a 25-yard shot wide of the right hand post.
Greenwich, slowing possession down to make the pitch as wide as possible were having success on each wing; Liam McDevitt and Nathan Paul on the right, Mo Eisa on the left, but crosses into the Chatham box generally found the head of the giant centreback Ejiro Okosieme.
It took 15 minutes for the visitors to fashion their first sight of goal with Hickey getting on the end of a Nathan Paul cross with a header that forced Alex Hyde to tip over. This was the first of a series of corners on the right wing taken by Peter Sweeney. The third in the sequence saw Sweeney play a 1-2 with Liam McDevitt, before driving to the corner of the area and firing a left foot shot across the goal face.
A long thrown from McDevitt on the right was flicked on by Danny Young into the middle of the area, where Mo Eisa took the dropping ball off the toes of Lewwis Spence, and his volley was sliced wide. Hickey had another glancing header from a Sweeney corner flash across Hyde’s goal as Greenwich pushed forward.
The goal finally arrived on 42, but it came from a mistake by Chatham skipper Jon Difford. A patient buildup between Hickey, Lewis Clark and Spence saw the latter swing a 40-yard ball forward that was miskicked by Difford into the path of Eisa. The forward took the ball into the area before driving a low shot under the body of Hyde into the bottom right corner.
In the closing moments of the half, Chatham benefitted from a good advantage played by Mr Horne, allowing Luke Medley into the left side of the area. Medley’s low cross saw Freeman shoot, but the effort cannoned off 2 Borough defenders, before being hacked clear.
The second half continued in the same vein, with Greenwich controlling play and looking to break in behind the Chatham defence. Another former Chatham player, Rob Denness, took on an early shot that was well wide of the right post, and Denness may have had another chance moments later, but Liam McDevitt tried a shot himself, with Denness in a much better position.
Lewwis Spence was having an increasing impact on the midfield and had a shot blocked by Abdul Lyoubi that led to a series of corners that Chatham failed to clear convincingly. From the next set piece, McDevitt attempted an overhead kick inside the 6-yard box that Hyde had to tip over, and from the resulting corner, Greenwich extended their lead. Sweeney’s corner led to a Spence header that rebounded from the left hand post to Danny Young. Young, with his back to the goal, backheeled a shot through a crowd of players and past an unsighted Hyde.
Chatham made their first chance which immediately led to a chance for the impressive Ejiro Okosieme who, despite the scoreline, had an outstanding game in the Chatham defence. The big defender met Ryan Flack’s cross with a powerful header that shaved the left post.
Chatham’s last two changes took place midway through the half, and Flack had another chance from a freekick, but curled the ball too close to Craig Holloway to trouble the goalkeeper, or allow his forwards to attack the ball.
On 73, a run from McDevitt led to Greenwich’s third goal, which effectively killed the game. The winger picked up the ball on his right wing midway inside the Chatham half. His initial burst took him through 2 soft challenges before he benefitted from a rebound off Okosieme’s legs to allow a drive from 20 yards that crept inside Hyde’s right post.
Before the game could be restarted though, one of the Chatham replacements, Moses Ashikodi walked off the pitch and retook his place on the bench. Gary Alexander admitted that he had to ask the referee whether he’d issued a card, he hadn’t, to work out what was happening, while Paul Pigott admitted that there was an argument on the pitch. But as he explained “players have argued before and dealt with it, but obviously they couldn’t today.”
With only ten men for the remainder of the game, Chatham struggled to gain any territory and it appeared to be only a matter of when, not if Greenwich would extend their lead. But full credit to the Chatham players, they held on manfully.
Denness had a scorching volley tipped over by Hyde and Eisa had a shot from inside the box blocked by a combination of Lyoubi and Okosieme. The final chance came in stoppage time as Denness’ low cross from the right was flicked into Hyde’s arms by the arriving Charlie MacDonald.
CHATHAM TOWN: Alex Hyde, Freeman Rogers, Abdul Lyoubi, Ejiro Okosieme, Jon Difford (Enoch Adeji 66), Owen Price (Mohammed Kaffo 61), Ryan Flack, Thomas Mitcheson, Ricky Freeman, Luke Medley (Moses Ashikodi 66), Josh Bray.
Subs not used: Austin Edwards, Jack Barnes.
Caution: Owen Price 45+1
GREENWICH BOROUGH: 1- Craig Holloway; 3- Nathan Paul, 12- Danny Young (8- Charlie MacDonald 84), 5- Liam Hickey, 18- Lewis Clark; 7- Liam McDevitt (17- Makhosini Ryan-Khanye 77), 4- Peter Sweeney, 14- Lewwis Spence, 15- Bradley Pritchard; 9- Rob Denness, 11- Mo Eisa (10- Micheal Power 85).
Subs not used: 2- George Pilbeam, 16- Glenn Wilson.
Goals: Mo Eisa 42, Danny Young 58, Liam McDevitt 73.
Attendance: 129
Referee: Mr Jammal Horne
Assistants: Mr Gary Baker and Mr Olly Fyfe
Picture supplied by Dave Adkins