Despite the strong wind, the sun shone on Brocton today as they weathered a storm of Meir attacks and came away with a well earned, but undoubtedly fortunate win.

With the wind at their backs Meir attacked in numbers from the start but mostly over hit their final ball and Brocton’s keeper Mark Fleming was relatively untroubled in the first half. In fact it was a throw on which eventually gave Meir a well deserved lead as it was allowed to bounce inside the box and Mitchell Barnett was alert at the near post to nip in and poke it home. That was as late as the half hour mark, but just before the end of the half Alex Mason had to battle to keep his feet on the right edge of Meir’s box, wondering why no penalty decision was coming his way. He managed both to keep his feet and slip the ball infield, where Lee Melvin pounced and squirted the ball in at the near post to emulate Meir’s earlier effort.

Meir actually played much better football with the wind facing them and their movement, particularly wide, was excellent. A series of good opportunities came and went with Brocton’s Fleming now in almost constant action and as time went on it became more and more clear that on this day he was determined not to be beaten.

He saved no fewer than four point blank shots inside his area and one in particular showed an agility to get low down to his right and near to his body to save with both hands, that seemed impossible for such a tall keeper.

Brocton’s attempts to play out continually got them in trouble as they could not match either Meir’s superior use of body all over the pitch, nor their speed of thought. It seemed only a matter of time until they were worn down and finally Fleming must be beaten.

When the keeper did have control of the ball his huge kicks, which could easily simply have sailed on to his opposite number, were tempered and became a real threat. One such was controlled by Kiwan Fars and his quick slip into the path of the lethal Alex Mason, left Mason one on one with Mark Cumberbatch, Meir’s keeper. Mason kept cool and slotted the ball past the advancing keeper to give Brocton an unlikely lead.

 Meir continued to pound Brocton’s area and Fleming continued his heroics until, with the finishing line almost in sight, a melee on Brocton’s right hand side of the box left Aaron Singh floored and Meir in possession. Brocton continued to battle, but Meir managed to get the ball beyond the right hand side of the box and as Flemimg came to narrow the shooting angle, a clever dink into the area left Connar Follett to sweep the ball home for the equaliser.

Meir were right to increase their efforts to get that extra goal to win the match, but eventually their adventure led to disaster for them as Fars harried Follett for possession of yet another huge high clearance and Follett headed strongly back to his keeper only to find that Cumberbatch had come to collect and was left stranded as the ball sailed into his net.