Chester FC V Dulwich Hamlet - MATCH THREAD - PSF - 12/07/19

£8,or £5 concessions according to Twitter.

Thanks Lobster. I'll have that.

For both sets of players. Dulwich travelling up today and playing two games in less than a day - Chester tonight and then Marine tomorrow at 1pm.

Madness he’s playing at this level.

I am going for a 3-1 chester win

I hope so it will be great to watch

And the score is

Griffiths looked decent and Murray's a right boost, wasn't much else to take from the game to be honest.

Anthony Johnson post match interview -

www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxevzZQpYKX

Thought Stopforth and Roberts were decent, and Murray when he came on. They were a good side, though guilty of a few naughty tackles for a friendly.

Hours on a bus not done us much good. Maybe they should have headed back yesterday?

Got a feeling that "Titch" Murray will really come good this year, there's a real talent there

Not a great display this evening by all means. We were beaten by the better side as Dulwich Hamlet actually surprised me with how good they played their football. However, they made a number of needless, dirty fouls for a so-called ‘’friendly’’. Things were never going to be easy for us considering we arrived following an 8 hour journey back from Newquay, and with so many friendlies coming up we won’t find everything straightforward.

The first half was an even affair that didn’t produce too much. Dulwich started off as the more effective though as they made some decent counter-attacks and were a quick, direct side. We had our fair share of the ball too but took our time a little and made one or two sloppy passes at times. Ex-blue Christian Smith went close for the visitors early doors as a free kick went wide. It took us a while for our first real chance, but Anthony Dudley wasn’t too far off from finding the target as a shot went across the face of goal. Not long before the break though Dulwich were millimetres from going ahead as Christian Smith had a golden chance. His header hit the crossbar before bouncing right in the middle of the goal line, which was a huge let-off for us. We headed into the break lucky to still be on level terms.

Our second half performance wasn’t too bad, although we could have done better to prevent the two goals we conceded. The visitors made it 1-0 as Danny Mills tapped in the rebound after his initial shot forced an impressive save from Russ Griffiths. Then, Mills doubled Dulwich’s advantage as he slotted the ball into the net with plenty of space around him. After that though the visitors made a number of bad challenges and became a dirty outfit. The linesman closest to us had an awful game and made a number of wrong calls. In all fairness we didn’t play too badly in the final 15 minutes as once Iwan Murray and George Waring came on, we became more ambitious going forward. The latter headed the ball wide following a cross by Danny Elliot. Not long after though we got back into the game as Dudley finished off an impressive move. Iwan Murray started off the move as he skipped past two Dulwich players before interchanging with Waring. Then, Murray played the ball through to Craig Mahon who passed it to Dudley, which made him curl a shot into the far corner. We did have some mini-spells, but unfortunately Dulwich constantly broke our play up with some poor fouls. Just before time Russ Griffiths pulled off a superb stop to deny Aristede Basselle as he got a strong hand to tip the ball over. It just wasn’t to be for us tonight, and we just have to admit that we didn’t deserve the victory.

My man of the match for tonight goes to Iwan Murray who changed things when he came on. He played a key role in our consolation goal, and made some good runs with the ball in the latter stages. Danny Elliot shown some positive signs early on although he unfortunately fluffed his lines at one stage in the first half. Trialist A (Rhys Oates) had another decent game too as he pressed Dulwich’s defence really well with his pace, and had some nice touches. Other than that only the two Garys, Stopforth and Roberts, put in decent shifts tonight. Stopforth was energetic as ever and covered a lot of ground, whilst Roberts made some nice passes.

What concerns me is that with tonight’s opposition playing at the same level as us, we weren’t as energetic as them. I take it that they are part time too so with us now being hybrid we really should have got into them more tonight. As some have said already we haven’t really planned this friendly well. I have no complaints in regards to it being played tonight (as Dulwich have another match tomorrow), but we should have travelled back from Cornwall yesterday to ease the burden a little. We didn’t put our best display in tonight so I can only hope that we can dust ourselves off over the weekend ahead of Tuesday night against Carlisle United. They will give us a game too as they are a good side.

Just checked the Friendlies for this month and in total (including Chester X1) we have 12 in 25 days which is ridiculous, even omitting the Chester X1 games we have 8 upto the end of July then kick off the campaign on 3rd August with another 8 games in that month. Think the bosses really need to manage the team selections for the remaining friendlies to avoid further injuries/niggles and burnouts before the season starts.