The race for the Division Three title took another twist as Richard Fogelman's 28th league goal of the season inspired L'Equipe to a memorable win over the leaders.
March 10, 2014 16:00
ByDanny Caro, Danny Caro
MGBSFL DIVISION THREE
L'EQUIPE 1 NORSTAR LONDON RAIDERS C 0
The race for the Division Three title took another twist as Richard Fogelman's 28th league goal of the season inspired L'Equipe to a memorable win over the leaders.
Norstar battled hard and defended solidly, but aside from a dominant spell at the beginning of the second half, didn't play as well as they could have done.
With two minutes left on the clock, Jonny Kay charged down a midfield error from Raiders and the ball released to Fogelman who duly ran half the length of the pitch and happily hit the roof of the net from just outside the edge of the box.
Delighted L'Equipe joint-manager Dan Cordell told JC Sport: "The scenes of utter jubilation followed with the team haring down the pitch to celebrate with him – such is the confidence in our striker and belief be will finish pretty much every chance that no-one from our team bothered to run up with him in case a square ball was on."
Cordell could hardly contain his delight about the win. "The boys were absolutely superb - it was a true L'Equipe performance – dogged, gutsy, fearless and all 12 involved in the game played for each other.
"Keeping the Raiders frontline quiet was always going to be difficult, but with Nick Stern having is best game since returning to the club at centre back and Jamie Warwick commanding his box all game, nothing was going to get through.
"It was also such a sweetener for the team after the papers wrote us off and the NLR manager claiming it would be easy to keep Fogey quiet to take the three points in such dramatic fashion.
"I think it goes to show that form is temporary but class is permanent and if the Raiders boss thought he could keep him quiet for two games he was very much mistaken.
"Not to take anything away from Fogey's goal, but it was a true team performance that earned the three points and I am sure all the lads are feeling the aches today – bring on Masters football!
"Our next goal is to put Catford to the sword and then steal a match on top spot."
Disappointed NLR boss Zack Gothelf told JC Sport: "If we had turned our utter dominance at the start of the second half into a goal then L'Equipe would never have come back. As it happened, we couldn't get the ball into the back of the net.
"We were disappointed with the result, but the league is still very much in our hands."
