Following a 2 week break due to the wet weather we returned to action with a difficult looking trip to Pembury Reserves. Although our hosts have not had the most successful years to date we always knew that were going to have to work extremely hard to get anything out of today's game.
 
With Paul Herbert away in Europe competing in the men's downhill, we again had to shuffle our pack, but with Dan Rosier,  Matt Thompson, Mike Bowen and Leon Piscina all returning after missing our last fixture we still had a good strength squad to choose from. We lined up with J Faulkner in goal. A back four of Hart, Bridges, Chambers and Hunt. Thompson partnered Bowen in the middle of the park with M Faulkner and Rosier occupying the wide positions. Warner and Thomas continued their partnership up front. On the bench this week were Tuema, Gurney, Poore and Piscina.
 
On a big, heavy pitch we made a decent start and although we didn't really create many goal scoring opportunities we dominated possession during the opening exchanges. Peter Hart continuing his comeback from injury proved to be a good outlet for us at right back and was always willing to receive the ball and start an attack with forceful runs into the opposition half.
 
Unfortunately a few half chances came and went without us really troubling the scoreboard. Typically the inevitable then happened and on one of the few times Pembury made inroads into our half they managed to take the lead with a well struck shot from their young striker.
 
The rest of the half was played out in exactly the same vain. Us dominating possession, but failing to create any clear cut chances. At half time we spoke about trying to retain possession and to keep trying to play our football, as we hoped that this would not just get us back into the game but to go on and win convincingly.
 
Sadly that never happened. We again had lots of possession but their keeper was never really troubled. Thankfully midway through the half we managed to get back level when Faulks found the back of the net. This was the lifeline that we had been hoping for and at this point i think we all thought that we would go on to close the game out. But in typical fashion just as we got a foothold back into the match we conceeded almost straight away. We failed to deal with a deep corner and a towering header left us 2-1 down with 20 minutes to play.
 
What is pleasing to see from the squad this year is that we never know when we are beaten and always seem to be able to go up a gear when we need to. As my mother always used to say you only get out what you put in, and thankfully this old adage was proved today as over the last quarter of the game we laid siege on the Pembury goal and rarely let our hosts out of their own half. Having reverted to a back 3 following Pete's calf strain, and with Leon, Josh and Tuem's all coming on, we had plenty of attacking threat. With 10 minutes remaining we equalised when Bomber beat Leon to the ball to smash the ball home, following good work down the right and then with only a few minutes remaining on the clock the same player got what turned out to be the winner with a great right footed shot that left the keeper stranded.
 
There was still time for Pembury to launch one further attack and only a good save from James kept our lead intact. From the resulting corner the crossbar this time came to our rescue and meant that we left Pembury with all 3 points.
 
Although not at our best today we managed to dig in and get a result. Pembury frustrated us today and they are a better side than the league table shows, however if we are to have any success this year we will need to up our game. Hopefully all of the bad weather is behind us now and we can get back into a rhythm of playing football matches.
 
Next week we are due to host Penshurst Park.