First Team Vs Fire United

31 August 2019

FA Vase 1st qualifying round

Erith and Belvedere          3          Pope-Campbell 44, 87, Quan 83

Fire United                           0

DERES LEAVE IT LATE TO PUT OUT BRAZILIAN FIRE

Erith & Belvedere began their FA Vase campaign with a convincing scoreline, even if they did leave it late to add a second and third goal.  They’d scored once in each of their first eight games this season, so the win was a relief.

Fire United Christian Football Club is a Brazilian community club launched in Lewisham but now based in Plaistow.  They had lost their first two games in the Eastern Counties second division, and had three sent off the previous week in an Essex Senior Cup tie against May and Baker abandoned with the score at 1-6.

However they took the game to Deres and looked a threat a few times in a fairly even first half.  Neto Rocha shot over the bar from close range with the first decent chance of the game on 20 minutes, and Antonio and Pedro Praes had shots easily held by Lewis Mitchell shortly afterwards.  At the other end Eric De Melo played a lovely ball through to Thomas Ngegba, who was a little too slow to shoot when a first-time effort could have brought dividends.  Kameiko Pope-Campbell shot across the face of goal soon afterwards.

Ten minutes before the break both sides had their best chances of the half within a minute, Chan Quan’s shot hitting the post and rebounding almost on the goal-line, and Joao Vitor Souza’s arcing header being pushed away acrobatically for a corner.

The breakthrough came on 44 minutes when Connor Dobson’s forward ball was laid off by Ngegba to Quan, whose shot was parried by Preza but fell to Pope-Campbell who buried the chance from a narrow angle.

Fire United posed rather less threat in the second half, although Deres were somewhat lacklustre in terms of carving out chances.  Ten minutes from time, however, Sokar received a second yellow card when bringing down Baba Adeniran just inside the box.  Yet Pope-Campbell’s penalty was poorly struck and easily saved.

Three minutes later, however, Pope-Campbell made amends when he cut back a cross from the right into the path of Quan whose low shot beat the keeper.  Then with three minutes to go Tony Hill found Pope-Campbell with plenty of space in the box to turn and score a third. 

Deres now host Oakwood in the second qualifying round on 15 September.

DERES: Mitchell; Hill, Dobson, De Melo, Yembra, Jones (Kalonda 61), Feudjiro (R Wade 57), Quan, Pope-Campbell, J Wade, Ngegba (Adeniran 52).

FIRE UNITED: Preza, Sibide, Sokar, Edobor, Goncalves, H Souza, Praes, Antonio (Cardoso 59), Neto Rocha, JV Souza, Lopes.