Whitstable Town Reserves opened their Kent League Division 1 campaign with an emphatic away win at Thamesmead Town Reserves on Saturday. Manager Dave Fairclough had challenged his players to carry their impressive pre season form into their opening League game, this was achieved in style as they scored six goals against a strong Thamesmead Town Reserve side containing a number of the first team squad, including most recent signing ex Southend United and Colchester United professional Ben Lewis who transferred to the Mead from Croydon Athletic last week.
Whitstable Reserves started well and set a high tempo from the off, Thamesmead struggled to cope with the 4 – 5 -1 formation which evolved to 4 -3 -3 whenever Whitstable had possession. The movement of the forward trio; Captain Wayne Fittall , Danny Williams and Callum Day was a constant threat and it seemed a matter of when , not if, Whitstable would score. Scott Lawford finally broke the deadlock after 29 minutes as he cut in from the left wing and latched onto a threw ball from Wayne Fittall, he rounded the keeper and calmly passed the ball into the goal. In reality it was remarkable that remained goalless for so long as Whitstable hit the woodwork on five occasions and were denied by some excellent goalkeeping in the opening 25 minutes. In the 40th minute Whitstable were made to pay for not taking any of those earlier chances as Thamesmead scored against the run of play from a corner to level the score at 1 – 1. Rather than provide further impetus to Thamesmead the response from Whitstable was immediate, from the restart a fine attacking move involving 9 passes resulted in Wayne Fittall firing home from the edge of the penalty box.
In the second half Whitstable continued to press forward in search of the crucial next goal, they did not have to wait long as Wayne Fittall scored his second goal in the 48th minute when he headed in at the far post from an excellent Scott Lawford cross. At this point Whitstable were rampant and in the 55th minute Liam Whiting scored after exchanging an exquisite one two with Luke Jackson before unleashing an unstoppable shot from 25 yards. To Thamesmead’s credit they never gave up and again got themselves back into the game in the 60th minute, after a scramble on the edge of the Whitstable penalty area a drilled shot that was going hit Luke Jackson on the arm, the referee awarded a penalty which was duly dispatched to make the score 2 – 4 . Again, Whitstable’s response was immediate as Charlie Partridge cut inside from the right to get on the end of an excellent through ball from Steve Baines, he calmly fired the ball into the far corner to quickly put an end to any hopes of a Thamesmead fight back. Danny Williams scored the sixth in the 80th minute with a spectacular volley into the top corner from a James Duffy cross. Callum Day was unlucky not to score to top off an excellent target man performance as he was denied by the woodwork on two occasions in the 85th and 89th minute.
A delighted Manager Dave Fairclough said ” It was important that we got off to a good start in our league campaign, I have been pleased with our pre season form and relieved we have got a good result today, any win at Thamesmead is a good result but our performance today was excellent. The Team spirit is superb and the lads have showed they have character, there is a desire and passion to play for the Team and the commitment and hard work put in by everyone to date was rewarded today. We are still very much at the “work in progress” stage and will get better, offensively we are looking creative and have plenty of innovation in open play. I was disappointed to concede two soft goals today as overall our defending as a Team was good, we switched off twice and got punished but will learn from it and eliminate that in future games.
Whitstable Res :
Smith , Duffy, Seagars, Sayer , Fitchie, Jackson, Whiting (Partridge 65 mins), Lawford ( Baines 65 mins) , Williams , Fittall (Braidwood 70) , Day . Subs not used = Mc Dermott , Egan
Posted in 
