With a spate of unavailabilities down the club, the 4s travelled to Chelmsford with a bare 11 players, a number of whom were carrying injuries. Storm Bert was already showing itself and whilst the wind had picked up, we were fortunate to not have the driving rain that was expected. Despite this relief, the winds did mean that Dan Copley arrived late after struggling to find his way past a fallen down tree and as the whistle blew, Dan was still getting his shin pads on. Anticipating an all out attack, we decided to set up with an extra man in midfield, leaving the experienced Andy Clark to plough a lone furrow up front.

Chelmsford had no such worries with numbers and with 4 subs ready to interchange at will, they set off at the fierce pace we expected. Pushed back on the defensive, the 4s held out for the first ten minutes before Chelmsford's second short corner found its way into the back of our net. As a team that are beginning to master the art of the comeback, we gradually settled into our game and started to win the ball a bit higher up the field, pursuing our policy of trying to win attacking hits and short corners. From one of our attacks, Nick Chandler drove down the right and rifled the ball across to Andy in the D. Andy bought himself some space and his shot (whilst facing away from the goal) came from the full 16 yards, surprised the keeper and beat him at his right post.

After some further alarms, ably dealt with by Rich in goal - with a tremendous save that both teams were impressed with - we reached half-time level, knowing we had no room to let up the effort if we were to get something from the game. Perhaps we surprised Chelmsford, as from the start of the second half, we got Andy free on the right. His cross was met full on by Steve, only for the keeper to make a fantastic save, but he was unable to prevent Bertie pouncing on the rebound to give us a 2-1 lead. The game continued with Chelmsford applying midfield pressure, and we continued to hold our own for the next 10 minutes, but when we suffered our second green card suspension we were unable to prevent an equaliser after the defence had been pulled out of shape.

The last quarter of the game started pretty evenly, but when Nick suffered another hamstring problem, we had to reshuffle the team and started to flag against their superior numbers. Luckily, one of their younger players took pity on us by committing a horrible stick tackle which took him off the pitch for the last 5 minutes which allowed us to see out for a very commendable 2-2 draw.

The whole team put in a massive effort this week, not one person failing to give 100%, which was reflected in the 3-way tie for man of the match between Rich, Dan and Jezz. The result keeps us in second place, 3 points ahead of the other Chelmsford team in our division, with a game against Southend up next.