Walsham Le Willows (FA Cup) (2018-19) – The Tree Surgeon

This afternoon we play our first ever FA Cup game as Walthamstow and our visitors are Walsham-Le-Willows FC – all the way from Suffolk.

I see our manager featured in the BBC Sport web site in the FA Cup section this week.

It honed in on the number of clubs that Ryan has played for in his career to date (don’t count out a game or two for us, once he is fully fit) – talk about the old Tommy Docherty joke about having more clubs than Jack Nicklaus, in Ryan’s case, more clubs that Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Colin Montgomery and Rory McIlroy put together (mind you, with Lee Flynn, you could probably add, Phil Mickleson and Nick Faldo as well).

After what appeared to be a slightly disappointing opening game, we put together a resounding 5-1 win at West Essex on Tuesday, with Christian Owusu grabbing himself a hat trick.
Having seen brief highlights on the Twitter feed I was impressed with his hat trick goal, the flick on completely wrong footed the keeper. The penalty was Harry Kane like in its execution and when I saw his second it reminded me of a Tottenham striker of a slightly older vintage, Jimmy Greaves (for those of a younger age, ask your Dads).

He wanted the goal so badly he was willing to nick it a team mate, to me, that shows a true strikers quality and underlined my impression, forwarded in these pages last Saturday, that he will give expert goal scorer, James Peagram a run for his money to end the season as top scorer.

I am sure James will rise to the challenge and that has to be good for the team.

Good also to see that Ryan and the management team are still bringing in experienced players to bolster the ranks, with former Harlow & Ware man, Junior Appiah, having an excellent debut, setting up the pass from which James Peagram was fouled to get us our penalty and having a hand in at least, two other goals.

There is serious money at stake even in the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup these days, so today’s game is not just about prestige.

We have not had a decent cup run for some time, so one this season would be most welcome – hopefully, the BBC might even follow up the Ryan Maxwell article with a few brief highlights from today – wouldn’t it be nice to be on the box and we could even get Graham Larkbey to do a few songs – much better than Britain’s Got talent.

Getting back to the match last Saturday, I think everyone, including myself saw the result as two points dropped rather than one gained, but, after seeing Hoddesdon win 3-0 at Sawbridgeworth on Tuesday, perhaps the result has to be put in context, as Sawbo were many people’s dark horses for a strong season.

Although West Essex have started the season with two defeats, they still are expected to have a season where they will be in the top half, rather than the bottom half of the table, so a four goal victory is pretty impressive.

But, today we need to wipe the slate clean and not get our heads turned by that result and work hard to earn a path to the next round.

Finally, I see the rabble are starting to get songs for each player, I notice the latest one is a tribute to Jack Leachman – all I can say is that it’s a good job that we still don’t have Ojawale Ojelabi or Volkan Calcalioglu in our side, that would have presented a real challenge.

So let’s hope we can continue our unbeaten run and set up a 100% record for Walthamstow in the FA Cup.