Bentley Hat-Trick at Enfield Rangers

A nice day to play in Enfield and despite the full car park, the sun shone and the entertainment came thick and fast during this lunchtime KO that saw Harvesters South get back to winning ways after a week off last week, due to the wet weather.

Enfield Rangers is not a happy hunting round for me personally, My teams (various clubs) have played there for the last 7 seasons and have never come away with all 3 points, I can even remember being 3-nil up with 10 mins to go and still drawing 3-3, so I can finally say that the ER curse has been broken after a spirited performance from South who are growing in confidence with every game.

Harvesters were able to take early control of the game, winning most of the individual battles and creating chances, whilst the defence did well to soak up any threatening attacks without too much concern. Archie opened the scoring on 10 minutes after an excellent pass from Charlie slotting a low hard shot into the bottom right hand corner. Archie was working well at this point, attacking from deep and combining with the centre forward to create another 2 chances, the 1st was pushed round the post by the Enfield keeper and the 2nd went slightly high and wide of the right hand post before Archie turned to provider, well sort of, with a low drive under the keeper that was heading towards the left hand post when Max Graham, doing a great job of following up, pounced to help the ball in to make it 2-0. The half was wrapped up with a now familiar combination of a pass from Charlie and another excellent finish from Archie. 3-0 at the break.

The 2nd half started much like the first with Harvesters managing the game well and the 4th goal of the game was the pick of the bunch, Ollie won the ball in midfield and combined well to release Monty down the right, Monty in turn fed Max W who accelerated to the dead-ball line and put in a perfectly weighted cross and up stepped Archie to head home to complete his hat-trick.

Enfield started to battle harder for every ball just as Harvesters started to count their chickens a little too early and Harrison was called on to make a couple of excellent saves. The first was pushed round the post and the 2nd was a brave 1 on 1 where he collected the ball at the foot of the on-rushing striker. Before Enfield could get a foothold in the game, Harvesters managed to press again and put the ball in the back of the net, only to have the goal disallowed for a disputable offside. This time it was Archie who provided the cross for Max Westmore, who poked the ball in from 3 yards out, but ended up with a set of studs in his ribs from an over-zealous defender, which left him reeling in the back of the goal and could take no further part in the game, Almost before the injured player had left the pitch, Charlie scored Harvesters' 5th goal through the now common Archie/Charlie combination.

At 5-0 the question was not whether Enfield could conjure an unlikely upset, but whether Harvesters could concentrate long enough for their first clean sheet of the season, but it was not to be and Enfield got themselves a consolation goal with just 5 minutes to go from a corner where the unmarked player headed home at the back post from close range.

South continue their unbeaten league run to 4 games, sitting 3rd in the table with a game in hand on the early league leaders. Next up, Edgware Tigers at Home.