Tanners strike late to take the points

On a day when only one of our matches survived the overnight rain, Leatherhead leapt six places in the Bostik Premier Division with victory over Metropolitan Police at Imber Court.

The Tanners dominated the first half, and after failing to convert a number of half-chances finally took the lead on the half hour, Niall McManus firing home. The boys in blue were much quicker out of the blocks in the second half and got their reward with seventy two minutes on the clock, a corner being met by Jay Gasson who sent a looping header into the back of the net, but with the referee looking at his watch it was the Tanners who nicked all of the points, defender Jerry Nnamani leaping to head home a late winner.

The talk on social media before the match amongst Tanners fans centred around the yesterday’s departure of midfielder Sam Blackman. Blackman, who was arguably man of the match in the win over Kingstonian at the weekend, left after- as Assistant Manager Jack Midson explained in an interview with Back of the Net’s Mick Sullivan after the game- “contract talks between him and Sammy Moore broke down.” Jack went on to talk about the squad having a small budget, but when pressed about whether it was money that prompted Blackman’s departure remained cagey. “He’s been offered a new contract, so you can make what you want of that…whether it’s about money or not. Players move on- that’s football; we’d have loved to keep Sammy, he’s a great player but he’s moved on and we have to deal with it.”

Met manager Jim Cooper was disappointed with his squad after the game. “In the first half it was obvious that (my players) hadn’t prepared over the Christmas period. They were well off the pace, didn’t win a second ball, weren’t organised- although that one is down to me- but the lack of movement, work rate and communication was appalling.”

He was much more positive about the second half, however. “Credit to the boys, they came out and arguably Leatherhead scored with the only chance they had in the second half, and we had two, maybe three good chances to win the game.”

On Saturday the Tanners face a trip to Harrow Borough, whilst Met, who remain in seventh, host eleventh place Enfield Town.

If you’d like to listen to all of Mick Sullivan’s interviews in full, please follow him on Twitter- here.

All images here are the fabulous work of Alex Pratley. See more of them here.