Thame United 3-3 Leighton Town ( att : 101 )

August 24^th, 2019

FA Cup fever comes to Thame as the crowds flock to see the hosts play a team from the South Midlands Premier, a step below Southern League Division One Central where Thame United are currently playing.

Thame have seen hard times, financial troubles resulting in losing their ground and then their new landlords lost their ground too. After several seasons ground-sharing at Wallingford, their new £3.1M stadium opened in 2011 and Thame have slowly and steadily risen back up the non-league pyramid. Fatbear and Mrs Fatbear have their names on bricks in the clubhouse wall, having contributed to the fund-raising exercise for the new ground.

The last time I saw Leighton they lost 6-0 at Burnham.

On paper it should be an easy home win, and for the first 5 minutes Thame's attempts to play pretty football are thwarted by cynical defending. If it had been the last 10 minutes of the match there would have been at least 4 yellow cards, but the weak referee seems to not want to book anyone too early.

Having survived their nervy start, Leighton then start to look pretty good, with Ashton Campbell, their big number 11 on the left wing standing out with both pace and strength. It isn’t' too much of a surprise when the visitors take the lead when a through ball went through the square defence for Campbell to run through and score.

Lynton Goss, one of Thame's star forwards looks off the pace all game and soon collapses in a heap holding his leg, and has to go off. I suspect he shouldn't have started.

On around the half-hour Murrell, the Leighton centre forward has the ball about 8 yards out, but with his back to the goal the Thame defender allows him to turn and shoot for 0-2.

Renell McKenzie-Lyle, Leighton's goalkeeper is tall, black and wearing a bright orange kit with a black cap and looked like.....well, I don't know what ! He has a pretty good game apart from immediately after Leighton’s second goal he drops a cross under pressure, which is turned backed towards the goal and is going in. However, Gledhill, the Thame substitute makes sure, tapping home inches before it crossed the line. Thame dominate the rest of the half but it remains 1-2 at half time.

The second half is tedious for a long time, with Thame playing hopeless, aimless long balls out of defence, which usually go off for throw-ins or to the Leighton defence. Leighton look more likely to score on the counter-attack and only excellent last-ditch tackles stop them on three occasions.

On around 65 minutes, Gledhill finds himself out on the right wing and cutting back on to his left foot sends in a low cross. Dan West, Thame's number 8 tries to flick the cross, misses but confuses the defenders and keeper and the ball ends-up in the far corner of the net. West tries to claim the goal but all the Thame players congratulated the substitute !

The game then livens up a little bit with both sides having chances, before Leighton regain the lead in mildly controversial circumstances. Thame play another aimless long ball and the linesman flags for a clear offside. As most of the players stop for the ref to blow his whistle, the Leighton centre back plays on, sends a ball out to Webb, the right winger, who outpaces the Thame defender to run through to slot home for 2-3.

The lead only lasts a few minutes though, before a scramble in the Leighton area results in the Gledhill heading home from close range for presumably his hat-trick.

Thame press in the final few minutes but don’t create anything and Leighton hold out for the money-spinning replay in 10 days time. Presumably it can't be played this week as the police need plenty of time to arrange cover....

Overall, a fair result but nowhere near as exciting as a 3-3 score would suggest. As always at this level the game was marred by the constant abuse and foul language by both players and benches from both sides to the officials - most of it ridiculous, as apart from the reluctant to use his cards, I though the referee and his linesmen got just about every decision right.

One oddity, last season Thame stopped printing programmes and instead published them on-line. However, it seems that for the FA Cup, programmes have to provided so maybe I have a collector’s item. It is only a black and white photocopy, although the online version is in colour !

Highlights : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFqWfUFH6-o