After their telling off from manager Jeff King in the dressing room last week at Lowestoft, the Canvey players knew that they had to put on a better show today in the FA Trophy game against Wisbech Town. Wisbech are known to be a good side and any similarity between last week’s performance and today’s would mean certain defeat. With threats from Jeff that any player not showing 100% would be sent packing, the crowd were hoping to see something of the old Canvey – entertaining football and lots of goals.

What a pity that the weather was hell bent on destroying the game. With conditions reminiscent of last year’s match against Braintree the fans huddled together under the stand, trying to keep out of the horizontal rain blowing in off the sea wall. The pitch was under something like two inches of water in places, especially in the middle. This meant that any ball played along the ground was bound to stick, but any ball played in the air would be picked up by the gale force wind and could land just about anywhere – usually in the car park!

Andy Jones took a lot of criticism after the Lowestoft game but today, for the first half at least, he did show a bit more fire in his belly. The truth is that without Simon Liddle alongside him, Jonah has nobody to play off, either converting chances set up for him, or setting up chances for someone else to fire home. Early on today he chased one ball to the touch line and managed to send over a great centre that, in the windy conditions, could have ended up anywhere. As it happens, it landed in the ’keepers hands.

With pass after pass getting waterlogged in the centre of the park, it’s surprising that neither side used the dryer wings more. Wisbech did this in the second half and set up some very good chances.

Players on both sides got quite frustrated at the conditions and it is a credit to them they managed to keep their cool, as well as their feet. Paul Donovan was booked after 23 minutes for a tackle from behind on a Wisbech player, but the real culprit was always the weather.

Wisbech never took full advantage of the wind behind them during the first half and Canvey did very well to go in at half time with the score at nil – nil. In the second half Canvey used the advantage fully and had 90% of the play. Unfortunately they only managed to score once and this really is down to the lack of a goal grabber. News is that Danny Hazel has joined the club from Billericay. He couldn’t play today because of being ‘cup-bound’ but let’s hope that if he plays on Tuesday night he can go some way to filling the space left by Lidds.

The Canvey midfield kept up a good supply of long passes into the area, some of Wardy’s and Port’s being particularly dangerous. Shots from Jonah, Tilly and Willow were pushed aside and corners and free kicks were always difficult for Lee Bray, in the Wisbech goal, to deal with. Both ‘keepers had a difficult job dealing with high balls, but both Ballard and Bray are to be congratulated for playing so well under such difficult conditions.

Canvey came within a whisker of going one up on the hour when a great long ball by Tilly found Jonah out on the right wing. He beat his man easily and, helped by the wind, planted a beautiful banana shot that beat the outstretched hand of the ‘keeper but just wouldn’t bend quite enough to go in. Next it was Danny O’Shea’s turn when, from the second Canvey corner in very quick succession, the ball found him some 20yds out. He sent in a screaming shot that was only just wide.

It took Andy Sussex to break the stale mate. Just back from a run of unfortunate injuries, Sussex watched Willow pick up a loose ball just inside the Wisbech penalty area. From my position he looked well off-side, but the linesman had been getting decisions wrong all afternoon, what’s another one? Willow looked all set to shoot but instead he sent the ball across the face of an empty goalmouth where it found the tall defender on one of his raids upfield. He made no mistake with his shot and smashed the ball past the acrobatic ‘keeper to put Canvey one up.

With only four minutes of normal time left, Canvey substituted Jonah with Jamie Reilley who came on and put 110% effort in, but in the time allowed he didn’t really have the opportunity to pull off anything spectacular.

A much better performance by Canvey today, compared with last week’s disappointment with more cohesion and team spirit. What a pity that the ‘man of the match’ had to be the awful weather. In spite of atrocious conditions it was quite an entertaining game of football. But there again, this week I didn’t have a 100 mile drive home having just seen my team crash out of the cup.

Match Report by Merv