Pitching In Isthmian Performance of the Month Awards, March 2022

With things heating up at both ends of the table, March was a time to turn on the style and hold your nerve. Our Pitching In Performance of the Month winners did that and more, delivering some scintillating performances.

Pitching In Isthmian Premier

Bishop’s Stortford were nominated twice for this months award, but in the end we plumped for their three-nil win over champions-elect Worthing rather than their six-nil hammering of Merstham.

We expected the Blues to be difficult to beat- after all, they’ve only lost four times all season- but we didn’t expect that they’d have the Mackerel Men on toast! Goals from Chris Harris, Jonathan Giles and Ryan Henshaw earned them three well deserved points- and proved to the rest of the promotion chasers that Stortford will perhaps be the side to avoid in the play offs.

Pitching In Isthmian North

Bury Town haven’t had the best of seasons by their standards, but you would forgive Romford for not noticing any deficiencies when the boys from Ram Meadow arrived at Mayesbrook Park on March 5th.

After a goalless forty minutes, the visitors then went goal crazy. Ryan Jolland, Daniel Gilchrist and Max Maughn made it three nil with goals on forty one, forty two and forty five minutes, and after the break Maughn had scored two more for an eight minute hat trick by fifty three minutes, and got his fourth of the match- Town’s sixth- on sixty six. Daniel Gilchrist added another only a minute later, and a minute after that Jolland also confirmed a brace- which meant that Town had scored eight goals in twenty eight minutes.

Congratulations to all at the club.

Pitching In Isthmian South Central

Hanwell Town were on a fine run when Binfield came to call on Saturday 5th March. With only one defeat in eleven matches we thought that the Geordies would be too much for the Moles, and when they took the lead on seventeen minutes that seemed to be true- but that was when the Moles rolled up their sleeves (do Moles have sleeves?) and undermined Town’s promotion hopes a little. James Beauchamp equalised on thirty four minutes, Sean Moore put them ahead soon after the break, and Beauchamp added another just after the hour to leave Hanwell in a hole.

The Moles are undefeated since then, and now they have a prize to give them even more confidence as they look to undermine another four promotion contenders in their next four matches! If they can do that, perhaps they’ll have another prize like this at the start of May!

Pitching In Isthmian South East Division

Promotion-chasing Ashford United welcomed relegation-battlers Phoenix Sports on Saturday 12th March. The Nuts and Bolts had won their five previous matches and were looking for another three points to keep the pressure on Hastings United, but what they got instead was a crushing defeat, as Sports kept their hopes of a great escape on track with a goal in each half and a clean sheet. Malaki Toussaint got the first after fifteen minutes, and the victory was confirmed twenty one minutes from time when Byron Walker added another.

Congratulations to all at the Mayplace Ground, who might find some more confidence for their run in when gazing at the shiny trophy coming their way!

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.

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