Stow 0-0 Witham Town

The second attempt to play this fixture ended the way the first one did – with the teams at a stalemate. It wasn’t through a lack of effort from either side, but some wasteful finishing and solid defending meant the points were shared.

There was a debut between the Stow sticks for Ashlee Jones, while Te Wihongi and Tony Martin made their first starts of the season. For Witham Town, Stow’s Essex Senior League title-winning keeper Amarildo Cekrezi wore the number one shirt, while former captain and coach Gaz Dauti took the armbad.

The game took a little while to get going, but once it did both teams threw caution to the wind and attacked in numbers. Witham forced the first couple of corners of the game, but they were well dealt with by Jones, who set up a counter attack with a punch, which resulted in a couple of shots on target for Demaray Anyadike and
Martin.

Stow’s best chance of the game came with a quarter of an hour on the clock. A lovely defence-splitting pass from Callum Ibe found Aynadike who cut back to Martin lurking on the edge of the six yard box, who crashed a shot into the back post, which eventually flew out for a throw-in.

An injury to Munashe Mharapara after robust challenge from Rian McLean caused a long break, and halted any momentum generated by both sides, with the first half petering out without any real further incident.

Stow enjoyed far more possession in the second half, but looked vulnerable on the break, as Witham found plenty of space down both wings.

Jeffrey Cobblah, Izaih Antoine and Daraus Ghinea were all guilty of squandering one-on-one chances, but the worst miss of the night was probably Antoine, who somehow manged to kick the ball away from the Stow goal when left unmarked six yards out, with the whole goal to choose from.

Stow’s best chance of the game came when a Demaray Anyadike corner flew past everyone and out for a goal kick, and they continued to threaten in the dying moments of the game, but their killer instinct and decision-making was missing, and they had to settle for a point.