Sunday 19 February 2012

Goddaughter reaches footballing milestone

On Saturday my beautiful goddaughter clocked up her 100th live football game and I was fortunate enough to join both her and my uncle in watching Horley Town FC take on Epsom & Ewell FC in the Combined Counties Premier Division. It was the first time either of them had been to the New Defence, home of Horley Town, but it will be a game that will live long in all our memories - not for what happened on the pitch but the fact it was the 100th game my goddaughter (pictured below) has been to.

It was a cold, wet and rather miserable day and the strong gusts of wind and driving rain seemed to have an impact on the game which failed to come to life at all in the first half . But on the stroke of half time Horley secured a breakthrough when winger Adam Pullen beat the offside trap and was pulled down by Epsom 'keeper Adrian Jones who was then given his marching orders. Kyle Hough, one of my oldest mates, fired the penalty home to give his side a slim advantage going into the second half. (See Kyle's cool finish below)


Things went from bad to worse for Epsom as the Houghster bagged his brace shortly after the restart. Pouncing on a simple ball over the top, which had left the Epsom defence rather flat footed, Kyle rounded the stand-in 'keeper and slotted the ball home from a tight angle (pictured below) - much to the delight of the small home support gathered behind the goal. It was soon was 3-0 when a Horley free kick from the left-hand side, which should've been easily dealt with, managed to find its way through a crowd of players to winger Adam Pullen who fired low and between the 'keeper's legs to give his side some breathing space against the 10 men of Epsom.


Epsom scored a late consolation game but Horley always looked comfortable of securing victory from the start of the second half. On leaving the ground, I asked my goddaughter how she felt after watching her 100th football game and she replied: "Yeah fine" which did make me laugh. As we walked to the car, my uncle also said he is going to get my goddaughter a little trophy to commemorate her 100th game which I think is nice. But what I think is very interesting are some of the stats he later sent me about the 100 games they have been to.


Now the first thing to stress is that not all of football games have been non-league. She has been to watch Millwall on numerous occasions as well as Charlton Athletic and Fulham but the vast majority have been in the lower tiers of English football. The most goals she has seen in one game was 10 (although had we gone to Worcester Park on Saturday to watch them play we would have seen 12 goals!) and she has only witnessed two goalless draws. She has watched 80 different teams play and visited 25 new grounds.

She has also seen 357 goals and observed 52 home wins, 34 away victories and 14 draws. Out of the 357 goals there have been 211 different scorers with Beckenham Town's goal machine Gary Gorman leading the way with 17 goals followed closely by 11 own goals. She has also witnessed 29 successful penalties which equates to one in every three and a half games. Finally the record for most individual goals in a game goes to Horley Town's very own Kyle Hough with an impressive four against Colliers Wood earlier this season.

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