|
|
 |
| |
The Kentish Town ‘WAGS’, Jo O’Donoghue, Cristina Zanre, Maria Zanre, and Daniella O’Donoghue |
The dream is over, but ‘Townies’ vow to bounce back next season
Defeat in FA Cup debut further marred by side-line dust-up between player and manager
IT started with an impossible dream: non-league footballers Kentish Town FC holding the nation’s most coveted silverware, the FA Cup, proudly aloft.
But it ended abruptly this week with disappointment, team absences, and a sideline punch-up.
As tempers frayed during a passionate replay against Wellingborough Town at the Dog and Duck Stadium in Northamptonshire, Kentish Town’s star coach Clement Temile ended up on the floor in a dugout dispute with one of his substitutes.
It was the worst possible end to the club’s debut appearance in the FA Cup. The Townies had just lost 2-0 to Wellingborough, nicknamed “The Doughboys” after the local pork and pastry delicacy of “Hock and Dough”.
While police and paramedics attended to Mr Temile in the sponsors’ lounge, the players and management rallied around him, expressing hopes the one-time Nigerian sporting hero would not leave the club because of the incident.
Club manager Frank Zanre said: “It is out of order, but we’ve got to grow from this. At the end of the day I’m not going to allow one bad apple to spoil it for the rest of the team. At this level we just don’t need it. Obviously we hope Clement will stay with the club. It’s too early to say what the outcome will be but Clement has our full support.”
Mr Zanre confirmed that the player involved, who made off in a car immediately after the fracas, would not be playing for the club again.
Mr Temile’s flooring capped a disappointing but spirited evening at the Dog and Duck.
This was grassroots football at its rootsiest: the first qualifying round of the world’s most famous cup tournament, the antidote to the multi-million pound world of the Premiership.
The dedicated Kentish Town squad of postmen, sports trainers and teenagers who travelled from the heart of Camden to the “agrarian hinterland” town was notably bereft of their skipper, Tom McMullen, who was in Wales supervising a camping trip for special needs children.
Star striker Lee Scott, currently on remand for alleged burglary, was also sorely missed.
The Townies, who travelled to the ground in a rented minibus, rolling past “pick your own raspberries” farms and derelict steel plants, had never been so far from home.
Away support was thin on the ground in the Peter Ebdon stand (the two times world snooker champion is the club’s honorary president), but the cheers of five “Kentish Town WAGS” – their own name for themselves – ably matched the volume of their opposition in the stands.
One of the group, Daniella O’Donoghue, had left work at lunchtime to drive up with her friends for the big game.
She said: “We see a lot of their games. We’re Kentish Town girls.”
Christina Zanre added: “They’re a good team. It has nothing to do with boys in shorts.”
Dave Painting, 61, who has watched Wellingborough Town for 30 years, said: “Kentish Town have come to give us a game. We were lucky not to lose the first leg.”
The two teams tied in their first encounter in Barnet on Sunday afternoon. Unlike what you might see at the Emirates Stadium or Old Trafford, Mr Painting and his friends discussed fouls with the players from the sidelines during the match, while children of the players and supporters played together behind the goalposts.
Although Kentish Town formed 14 years ago on the pitches of Market Road and Wellingborough Town is the sixth-oldest football club in the country, the two teams were on level pegging until the second half, when the Doughboys dashed Kentish Town’s FA Cup hopes with a blistering volley.
It was followed by a questionable penalty which the barmaid announced over the PA system as “another goal for Wellingborough” before the penalty had been taken.
Maria Zanre, daughter of the Townies’ manager, said after the game: “It’s very disappointing. But we’re going to be back next year, bigger and better – face paint, colours, balloons, the lot.”
– Click here for full match report |
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
