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What a difference a day makes.
After a convincing win against Tilbury twenty four hours
earlier, a much changed Stones side struggled in a draw
against County League neighbours Bearsted.
With the exception of Matt Nicholl, Gary Byrne and
Mo Takaloo the Maidstone team had played together last
season but at times this wasn’t evident as the
Stones defended poorly and often resulted to lumping
the ball up field.
Unsurprisingly, Alan Walker wasn’t pleased with
what he had seen: “I’m very disappointed in
the application we’ve shown tonight, the team was
different but we went and asked the same things of people
and unfortunately it looked like the old days of early
last year.
He added: “People got back into bad habits, doing
silly things and making silly mistakes whereas they
hardly did any of that last night. But on a positive
note we scored a couple of good goals.”
It had all started well enough for the Stones with
Takaloo looking particularly dangerous. And Takaloo
got his first goal for United with 20 minutes played
when Sam Tydeman played him through and he placed the
ball in the bottom corner of the net.
But a school boy error from Gary Hemens allowed Bearsted
back into the game when instead of letting the ball
go out of play, he headed it back into the box and it
fell straight into the path of Russell McLeash who volleyed
past Pat Mullin.
Takaloo was still looking menacing up front however,
and he turned provider shortly before half time with
a perfect cross that gave Jason Barton plenty of time
to pick his spot and head in his opening goal of the
campaign.
Then some dreadful defending from the Stones saw Bearsted
draw level once more when substitute Ryan Royston failed
to put enough pace on his back pass and left replacement
keeper Richard Mannerings helpless to stop Russell McLeash
from scoring.
And just six minutes later, Bearsted grabbed a third
courtesy of a Ben West strike. But a good move from
the Stones brought a swift equaliser when substitute
Nick Hegley wriggled past two defenders before placing
an excellent pass into the box enabling Tom Berry to
lash a good finish through the hole in the net.
There after, the Stones had a couple of good chances
to win the game with Gary Byrne blasting over and Berry
wasting an almost identical opportunity to the one he
had scored earlier but that would have been harsh on
Bearsted who had comfortably matched their higher league
opponents.
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