Bank Holiday Blues

Monday 26th August 2019
Isthmian League Division One South East

Whitstable Town 3 (1) Herne Bay 0 (0)

Herne Bay: Jack Delo, Michael Turner (Bola Dawodu), Malachi Robinson, Laurence Harvey, George Crimmen, Danny Lawrence, Ryan King-Elliott (Kieron Campbell), Jordan Johnson-Palmer, Zak Ansah, Ricky Freeman, Tushaun Tyreece-Walters (Kyron Lightfoot).

Three changes from Saturday’s starting line-up with Michael Turner, Jordan Johnson-Palmer and Ricky Freeman replacing Simon Kabamba, Joe Nelder and Bola Dawodu.

The reaction of manager Ben Smith best sums up the afternoon: “It was a disgrace. The players let the club down, let the fans down and let each other down. You can’t keep giving goals away like we have; it was a really sloppy one early on and the second one is just embarrassing. There will be some big changes now, we’ve given people opportunities, but we can’t carry on giving them the opportunities, so we need to move forward and I don’t want to see a display like that again, that was embarrassing, truly embarrassing. I’ve got to say the fans were superb, to hear the fans like that even when the team were playing badly; full credit to them because they could have quite easily turned on the team. It’s our job now to give them a side that they can be proud of. They were excellent, so thank you to the fans and apologies for the performance.”

For the record Whitstable’s goals came from Marcus Elliott (7 minutes), John Walker (49) and Aaron Millbank (79). The searing heat was the same for both sides. Whitstable were nothing special but did what they needed to whilst Bay were poor in possession and gave the ball away too easily, lacked the legs in midfield to dominate, were lightweight in the air and continued to pump high balls for the home defence to deal with and were not quick enough to the second ball. There was a lack of penetration up front with Dan Eason in the Whitstable goal rarely challenged. An abysmal performance but the season has only just started and there is plenty of time to put things right.