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Slade Green lost their pride today - says management
Chessington & Hook Utd 2-0 Slade Green
Report by Phil Miles

"A performance that matched the weather, rubbish" those were the words of the Slade Green management duo after Saturday's pre-season defeat at Chessington & Hook.

Green started the game brightly and had there Combined Counties opposition on the back foot for most of the opening 20 minutes, but as the weather deteriorated so did the Greens performance.

A goal during injury time of the first half saw the home side take the lead, poor marking by Gallagher & Knight left the back four exposed and the Chessington striker did the rest.

Despite several changes at half time there was little , if any, improvement in the performance. Mid-way through the 2nd period saw a candidate for "joke" goal of the season, Phil Collier played the ball in field to Darren Upson, he promptly stepped on the ball and let in the centre forward, as Dave Williams came to cover he ran into his own player and the forward made no mistake.

Memories of some of the poor goals conceded last season came flooding back. Terry Malin commented afterwards " the players know how we feel about today's performance, as I've just told them we have only lost our pride today, if in 2 weeks we produce that kind of performance it will not only be our pride but 3 points as well that we lose. I'm disappointed today but it has been a hard week physically for the players, there fitness has improved but we will need to work harder to gain the level of consistency Phil and myself expect". So onto Tilbury at home on Thursday night.