Charterhouse Ist XI v Highgate School
On: Saturday, 7 October 2017
Venue: at Home
Score: 5 - 1
The last time there was such a mass movement of pupils coming to Godalming from North London was with William Haig Brown at the helm. With the new Headmaster looking on, with an open day in full swing and in the wake of Charterhouse’s announcement to go fully coeducational, these were exciting times. The visitors were Highgate, fresh from a draining run of fixtures which had left them, well erm, not so fresh. And so, consummate hosts that we are, having been asked to mix the teams up, we duly did, though still running out 5 - 1 victors in the 1st XI and 9 - 0 victors in the 2nd XI. There were hat-tricks in both games, from Dovell and Campbell, while William Turner was scoring another three in the U14A match. There were more hat tricks in Charterhouse on Saturday than in a Tommy Cooper show. Though questions will doubtless be asked about how a Bicknell and Plater double act failed to hang on to a 3 - 0 lead in that U14A match...
Still, on Big Ground debuts were being made. It was a first start for Rollo Payne, Toby West, Oliver Kristensen and for the harshest self-critic of the lot, Kai Magee. It was an absolute pleasure to watch the latter run through his full repertoire of self-doubt, self-loathing and self-criticism, accompanied as always by the occasional ‘aaaarggghhhhh’ whenever the outcome of his labours was anything less than utopian perfection. He actually played very well, so it would be instructive indeed to see his reactions in a game where he had a stinker. All around him goals were raining in, Dovell snatching a very tidy hat trick, West notching a calm and composed goal and Sam Browne swatting a ball directly into the net from a corner. But it could and should have been 2 - 2 at one point, with the Highgate striker spurning a glorious chance of an equaliser. In the end Charterhouse were just too strong and it was a satisfying day at the office, capped off by the 2nd XI referee telling us that our 9 - 0 victors had played some of the best football he’d ever seen at Charterhouse. So it all bodes well ahead of some high powered selection meetings this week, with Hampton lying in wait in the second round of the ISFA Cup. Another high pressured game awaits with Charterhouse having scored 12 goals in their last two matches. But Hampton will be a very stern test indeed. Revel in the pressure, bear hug the tension. ‘Let’s be ‘aving you!!’ as Delia would say.
