I blame lager and women for our poor form, says Otford United boss Denis Leigh

OTFORD UNITED manager Denis Leigh has blamed his players’ social lives for their poor midweek performances this season, writes Stephen McCartney.


The village club have staged three games underneath the floodlights at the Otford Recreation Ground and Leigh’s side have lost on each occasion.

They were defeated 3-0 by Dartford based side Fleetdown United in September, threw away a 3-1 lead against local rivals Chipstead, who scored three times in the final fourteen minutes to snatch a dramatic 4-3 win last month and they suffered an embarrassing 5-0 defeat to University of Kent on Wednesday night.

Otford have slumped to the bottom four in the Haart of Kent County League Division One table with three wins and a draw from their eleven outings and Leigh demands a victory tomorrow at fifth-placed side Forest Hill Park, who play at the Ladywell Arena.

“What I want to see is the players’ turn up with (the University of Kent game) behind them and a little bit of focus on the next ninety minutes,” said Leigh.

“There’s quite a few sides in our portion of the table pretty close on points, pretty close on goal difference.  Mind you after Wednesday night that might be different.

“We’ve got to go there and get some respect back and come away with some points.”

When asked whether his side are involved in a relegation dog-fight, Leigh admitted he will know more after their trip tomorrow.

“I think Saturday is the one that’s going to tell us that,” he said.  “If Saturday is not a positive result we really have to dig deep to survive and we need to show a lot of character.

“It will give me an opportunity, maybe, to get some reserves into the squad that haven’t played before.  Some of them are an unknown quantity and it’s not what you need at this time in the situation we find ourselves in.”

Otford United have a great little set-up and Leigh criticised his players for their lack of commitment towards the west Kent club.

“I don’t know for the life of me why, we’ve got a great set-up,” said Leigh.

“There’s lots and lots of local clubs who seem to be happy playing where they’re playing and it’s very difficult to attract players to come over.  For me I find it astonishing!  There can’t be many sides that have got this sort of facility or this kind of set-up and it should be a delight to come and play.  An evening match over here is quite a thing but generally the passion for football has gone out from the players’ point of view.  They all too busy socialising, using this excuse and that excuse.

“I don’t blame it all on lager and women, but I’m sure it has a fair bit to do with it!”

Meanwhile, University of Kent are aiming to pull off a shock when they travel to Premier leaders Bromley Green in the second round of the Bill Manklow Inter-Regional Challenge Cup tomorrow.

Team captain, Daniel Smith, 20, who picks the team, said: “We played them last season and we only lost 2-1 in the Cup so we’ll go there, we’ve got nothing to fear on the back of a 5-0 win (at Otford United) so we’ll go there and see what happens.”