For the second game of the day, I headed back to an old favourite at the Bauvill Stadium, to watch Chatham Town of the Isthmian League South East Division, play against Lancing FC.

Chatham Town came into the fixture in third place in the league, with thirty points from 15 games. Manager and owner, Kevin Hake, has seen his Chatham side stumble in recent weeks with two defeats in the last two away games at Three Bridges FC and Cray Valley Paper Mills.

Chatham Town goals have flowed freely again this season with Dan Bradshaw top scoring with 12 goals and Jack Evans and Emmanuel Oloyede both contributing nicely, with nine goals apiece. Attendances have matched the goal entertainment, with regular attendances over 700 commonplace. The highest recorded crowd, thus far, was for the Ashford United fixture, when 929 were in attendance.

Lancing have struggled in the opening half of the season. They sat, coming into the fixture, in seventeenth place, just above the automatic relegation places. Louis Veneti had top scored with six goals, while Tyrone Madhani has scored four goals. Joint managers, Alex Walsh and Dale Hurley, would be hoping for an unexpected three away points from today’s game.

The game started with Chatham Town pressure leading immediately to a goal, when Fabio Saraiva shot into the keepers’ far left corner, to make it 1-0 to the home side, in the fourth minute.

On twelve minutes, the score was 2-0, when Saraiva followed up for his second, after some hard work by Dan Bradshaw.

The remainder of the first half saw Chatham putting pressure on the Lancing defence and creating chance after chance. To their credit, the away side did find some shape, as the half went on and even had a couple of half decent chances.

The second half saw Chatham under pressure a bit more. Jack Evans created two good chances which Bodkin failed to make use of. Then out of the blue in the 61st minute Lancing had a chance, which Captain Kane Louis finished, to pull it back to 2-1.

The last twenty five minutes saw chances for both teams, but at the final whistle, it was the home team who took the points. The crowd of 570 had witnessed an entertaining match and the home fans were relieved their side had hung on.