Pitching In Isthmian Performance of the Month Awards, September/October 2020

By Ian Townsend

Our League sponsors, Pitching In, also sponsor our Performance of the Month Awards. Here are the winners for September and October.

Pitching In Isthmian Performance of the Month Awards, September/October 2020
Our League sponsors, Pitching In, also sponsor our Performance of the Month Awards. Here are the winners for September and October.

We had little more than a month and a half of football before we had to- temporarily at least- stop again, but it was rather an exhilarating period with some magnificent entertainment served up to the football-starved masses. We’ve perhaps never had more competition for the Performance of the Month Award, but after some arguing we’ve come up with the following outcomes:

Pitching In Isthmian Premier

There were some phenomenal performances in League and Cup, and we agonised over which should win, but in the end we gave our prize to Bishop’s Stortford in honour of their televised FA Cup Fourth Qualifying Round win over St Albans City. It’s difficult to ignore a giantkilling, and this was a giantkilling which was never in doubt from first minute to last, as the Blues got two early goals through Darren Foxley and Aaron Greene and were then largely untroubled as they coasted to the First Round.

Congratulations to all at the R&D Advisors UK stadium.

Pitching In Isthmian North

Again, we had a plethora of impressive performances to chose from. Bury Town, Aveley, Felixstowe and Walton United and Canvey Island all defeated sides from higher up the pyramid in the FA Cup and/or FA Trophy, but we went for Maldon and Tiptree on the basis that they did it three times! The victory we’ve chosen is that over Braintree Town on October 13th, Andre Hasanally with the only goal- but the Jammers also defeated Kingstonian and Haringey Borough during October.

Pitching In Isthmian South Central

We had a number of contenders for the South Central Division, but on closer inspection we found that Bedfont Sports were three of them! We’d nominated the club at the end of the runway for their FA Cup win over Premier Division Lewes, their FA Cup win over Premier Division Carshalton Athletic, and their win over Chipstead in the League- that one ended five-nil- but in the end it was the result against the Robins that we plumped for.

Carshalton Athletic had won five games out of five before taking the trip to Bedfont in the FA Cup, scoring seventeen goals and conceding only four. Two second half goals from Shamal Edwards put paid to that winning run and sent Sports through to the Third Qualifying Round.

Pitching In Isthmian South East Division

We had a shortlist of eight for the South East Division award, but again it turned out that one club dominated the list, and on this occasion that club was Cray Valley PM. The Millers were nominated for their six-nil thrashing of VCD Athletic, their five-one win at Harrow Borough, and their three-two win at Maidenhead United- and in the end we went for the latter, perhaps unsurprisingly given that their hosts that day are in the National League.

The Millers remarkably came from two goals down to take the victory, Ade Yusuff, Connor Dymond and Francis Babalola- in the last minute- contributing to what was perhaps the most remarkable win in the club’s history.

Pitching In is a Grassroots Sports Investment Programme launched by GVC, the multi-national sports-betting and gaming group which owns Ladbrokes and Coral. The partnership covers all three leagues that make up Steps 3 & 4 of the National Leagues System.

Pitching In has been set up with the objective of supporting, protecting and encouraging grassroots sports in the UK through a range of initiatives.

In addition to financial support, a key focus of the partnership will be to facilitate and encourage members of the community to become volunteers, and do some pitching in of their own. A Pitching In volunteering scheme will be established to link GVC’s Ladbrokes and Coral shop colleagues with their local clubs.

For more information on Pitching In please visit the website here.

Where next?

Carlton moves along the coast Bay midfielder signs on at Whitstable
AB1 Golden Gloves Awards- September/October 2020 Here are the winners of our first Golden Gloves Awards of the season, sponsored by AB1 Goalkeeping

The Pitching In Isthmian Football League newsletter

Keep up-to-date with our exclusive email newsletters.

Subscribe