Having humbled the champions elect in their previous game, EG Men's 3rd XI sought to finish off the league season in style by defeating the surprisingly confident Richmond 2's on Saturday afternoon.  The bright spring sunshine heralded an even brighter start for the Men in white and in the opening 10 minutes the visitors were unable to lay a stick on the ball.

Stunning attacking play from all with a typically cavalier attitude to defence, it was inevitable that there would be goals aplenty. And so it was that EG opened the scoring from a magnificent passing display from back to front with Si Horne finally slamming the ball into the backboards.

Time to rest on our laurels then, and let the visitors back into the game, as is the way with the 3's this season, nothing is ever easy.

Richmond won a couple of fortunate corners which were dealt with by Dakin and most of the rest of the half was spent with Grinstead admiring the visitors devilishly devious half court press and considering what curry to go for later on that evening.

Strange then that the second half should start as well as the first, suddenly EG were completing fifty yard passes and running Richmond ragged. 2-0 up. So once again time to take our foot off the pedal and being the ever so gracious hosts conceding a few more short corners. Clearly EG aren't the only side in the league that are having issues with their corner strikers, but their fourth change made no mistake in shovelling the ball onto a rather committed counterpart who deflected it over the prostrate Dakin.

This spurred the Sussex side on and they pulled another slick move out of their bag of tricks to go 3 - 1 up with Cameron Maynard scoring his second of both the game and the season. Again the visitors pressed and EG conceded another corner, this time with striker number 1 back in favour his initial shot was saved and the rebound smashed back waist high at one of his team-mates. Some say it was a mixture of skill and instinctive self preservation that drove him to deflect the ball away from his nether regions and into the goal. It is certain that had he not succeeded in getting some stick to it he would still be on the pitch now.

So a nervy final quarter of an hour, with some solid defensive work from Hook, Woodley, Baptiste and an evergreen Mark Slatter before Grinstead finally put it beyond doubt with the killer blow 5 minutes from time, with Andy Hook finishing off a short corner. Some festival moments in the closing few minutes not least of which was captain, Jumping Jack Horner, trapped in the corner, letting an aerial fly.  A good win, and a good end to a very up and down league season which see's the 3rds finish in 7th place, commendable for a promoted side but disappointing given we were top for a good few weeks at the start of the campaign.

Next up for the 3's is a Sussex cup semi final against Chichester the weekend after Easter and it would be good to finish the year with some silverware.