Reigate come through Bank scare

Reigate Priory Mens’ 1s were given a scare, but came through to maintain unbeaten record against a physical Bank of England team. Despite the majority of the Bank side seemingly opting not to do a warmup, it was the visitors who started the brighter of the two sides; their cunning ploy of not warming up seemingly disrupting the Reigate rhythm. Bank made the most of their early positivity with a well taken deflected goal to take the lead after 5 minutes.

Reigate Priory have been in fine form in front of goal this season and it wasn’t long before Reigate equalized through talisman Tom Pickersgill, who thumped the ball home. He then added another shortly after. The remainder of the first half was fairly non-descript with the half time score line 2-1 to Reigate.

The second half was a scrappy affair with neither team able to find any flow to their game, and poor execution of play in the final third chances were at a commodity. Reigate did get the breathing space they deserved when Jonny Perkins broke the Bank defence and coolly slotted home, before Pickersgill stepped up for his hatrick.

A needless yellow card for James Brooker saw Reigate go down to 10 men in the final few minutes, Bank created two good chances, one of which they scored from, and the other where the striker seemed more intent on creating a hole in Reigate keeper Henry Williams, rather than slotting into the corner.

Final score of 4-2 left Reigate with plenty to think about after the game; it was by no means a vintage performance but a defeat to Wimborne means that the side finished the day top of the table.

Squad:
Henry Williams, Arran Wood, Tom Crees, Owen Morris, Ollie Harvey, James Brooker, Simon Owen, Andrew Porter, James Chesterton, Tom Pickersgill, George Akerman, David Short, Jonny Perkins