With the bitter taste of last season’s promotion near miss still lingering the Old Thorns 2nd team walked out onto the Wimbledon Common Extensions in late September, ready to kick off what would be a very eventful 2009/10 season. Would we be able to replace the goalscoring abilities of Taylor, would Chris last a season without getting injured and would we find a permanent goalie?!

Unfortunately the first game didn’t go to plan, an unfortunate 2-1 defeat to a Dorkians team of children and OAPs. An unspectacular start but there were seeds of hope as new boys Luke and Charlie put in solid debut performances and Leighton not only played but got on the score sheet…with his head!

The 2s came back from this setback straight away, progressing through to the next rounds of both cups with ease. New boys Luke, Charlie and Sean had started to settle, we’d found a keeper in Dean and with Leighton and Si Thomas actually turning up to games regularly, the 2s were starting to look more like challengers, as we showed in our next league game, destroying Old Kings 9-1.

The first half of the season was highly successful for the Thorns. In the cup we were playing and beating teams in leagues above us and only went out in both games by one goal margins. The cup also gave us our one red card of the season, Dave George rugby tackling the oppo striker to the ground while already on a yellow. Rumour has it that the suspension coincided with a weekend Dave wanted to spend with his other mates but we can’t prove that.

In the league we were flying, aided by the dry pitches suiting our passing style of football we had won every game we played and threatened on more than one occasion to get into double figures. The goals were flowing, Luke Fry had sparked a promising partnership with Championship standard striker Chesterman, Leighton was scoring for fun and the rest of the team were chipping in when needed. By Christmas we were looking to get to the top, making steady progress against the teams that hadn’t had cup runs to slow down their point chasing.

The toughest team we faced were Tennisonians who were bullying their way into position as our main competition in the league. A battling 2-2 draw showed us, and Carlos in particular, just how they liked to play football, but away from home and again without a goalie the result was better for us than them. In addition we had a great win against St Mary’s, another promotion chasing team, thanks to two Mike Browne goals. It should be noted that they were the only two decisions that Mike didn’t complain about during the entire season. We were in a commanding position and knew that if we won our remaining league games we would finish top.

After a Christmas break of 6 weeks we ground out two more wins but we weren’t playing as well. We won these games in part due to yet another new addition. Luis Ponce, a flamboyant Ecuadorian goalie had made a great start to the year getting MOTMs in his opening 2 games.

Whether our slow start to the new year was down to too much boozing over Christmas or just the weather beaten pitches was unclear. We knew that we were getting complacent and got the wake up call that we needed in early February from an exuberant Glyn team. No more will be said about that dark day. Except that Chris managed to injure his A*S and we outlasted the oppo in their own club house after the match.

Again we needed to bounce back and that’s exactly what we did, getting revenge for our opening day defeat against Dorking thanks to a Spence brace and then coming back from 2-1 down against Tiffinians courtesy of a Luke Fry hat-trick. So back on track and with a few additions to the team by this point with Sam and Tom both playing more regularly and Semler back from his paternity leave we were looking to pick up where we’d left off before Christmas.

A busy March followed during which we played enough games to make Roy Hodgson complain about fixture congestion saw us seal the league in style. 6 games, 2 double headers, 5 wins and a draw saw the 2s move out of reach of the chasing pack. Goals were coming from everywhere, Tom Boyle and Greg both netted their first goals for the club, the antipodeans chipped in with a few and Bailey got rid of his negative goal tally after he’d missed a penalty earlier in the season. Even Fletcher got in on the action with his first goal in nearly two years!

The final game of the season fittingly saw us making amends for our shocking performance against Glyn earlier in the season. In front of Oli and Si’s better halves we showed Glyn exactly what “flat track bullies” we are and put 4 past them, ending their hopes of getting promoted and making sure that they knew we weren’t just here to fu*k spiders!

All in all a great season enjoyed by all, sterling performances throughout the team, the promotion we wanted and Champions to boot. Div 4 here we come!