White Ensign 1 Shenfield AFC 3

Pre Season Friendly, Saturday July 2nd

My first game of the new 2022/23 season saw me over at The Len Forge Centre near Southend Airport as Essex Olympian Premier Shenfield AFC got their pre season campaign of to a winning start after defeating Essex Senior Ensign in warm conditions on the Essex coast.

Ensign had quite a few trialists making their first appearance for the club, it's been all change at the club players and management wise over the summer, so they are looking to build again ahead of the new season, and they were up against a Shenfield AFC outfit who looked to be fairly similar to last season, although I cannot be sure if this was the case.

The visitors edged ahead after just seven minutes when a ball slipped into the attacker saw him control and fire home, but that lead lasted just six minutes as the visitors gifted their opponents a leveller after trying to play around with the ball too much on the edge of their own area resulted in the attacker nicking the ball off them, winning a challenge with the keeper, and slotting into the empty net, oops.

It remained this way until the 63rd minute when Shenfield edged ahead once again, and it was a lovely goal too, as the twelve received the ball, turned his marker superbly, before firing an unstoppable effort beyond the keeper into the top far corner, and then with two minutes left Shenfield sealed the win when after the Ensign defence had stopped, the visitors stole in uncontested down the right, and the ball in eventually broke to the fourteen who took a touch before rifling home.

This was the first time a lot of the hosts players had played a game together, and it kind of showed, yes the visiting keeper did make some decent stops to thwart them, but there was a lot of sloppy errors and some disjointment amongst them, but this was the first game of pre season so hard to be too critical right now, this is what pre season is for after all, ironing out those errors and rustiness.

Shenfield looked ok and looked like they had played together a bit more than their opponents, but it's hard to judge after your first pre season match, they have plenty of time to get things sorted for the new season after all, but this was a decent start from them that's for sure.

Full time White Ensign 1 Shenfield AFC 3