Flanagan’s Onions 1

Dandy Town 3

A little bit of luck can go a long way over the course of a football season, and Dandy Town’s may have just decided the Premier Division title race.

Worthy winners yesterday against Flanagan’s Onions, they were somewhat fortunate that a match that was more farce than football in the final 20 minutes was allowed to finish at all.

Torrential rain left the majority of the Goose Gosling Field under water and referee Leroy Wilson would have been within his rights to abandon proceedings, especially when players were unable to pass the ball more than a yard, let alone dribble it.

As it was, the former Dandy Town coach was happy to allow the game to reach its natural conclusion. “I’m just generally disappointed,” Mick Ward, the Onions coach, said. “We had a poor day; the referee had a poor day, certainly.

“I thought he could have called the game off with 20 minutes to go, but it wasn’t the only decision he got wrong.”

Town will argue that the game was over as a contest long before rain became a factor and now, instead of adding an extra fixture to the final weeks of the season, they are top of the pile, if only by virtue of goal difference.

Goals from Zaire Burchall, Angelo Simmons and Dominique Williams put the game beyond doubt before half-time, with Flanagan’s largely contributing to their own demise.

Burchall tapped in from a yard out when unmarked, Simmons, similarly unmarked, drilled in a low shot after the ball was cut back by Daeshun Butterfield and Williams struck a free kick underneath the wall from 25 yards out.

For their part, Onions did little to threaten in the first half, when their best chances came from set-pieces or a long ball knocked upfield in the general direction of strikers Kevin Ronaldson and Keston Lewis.

Better after the break, when their passing was slicker and their organisation more solid, all they could muster was a consolation goal from Lewis as the rain came down. “I don’t know what happened to us,” Ward said. “We were a different team in the second half and they couldn’t live with us, but the way we played in the first half cost us.”

For Town, the result now means that they control their own destiny. Two points clear of North Village, the league leaders have a simple task before them: stay focused and win.

Damon Ming, the Dandy Town captain, will make sure that the focus does not slip as it has in the past. “It’s good that we don’t have to rely on anyone else,” he said. “We’ll be focused on every game.

“We maybe let our guard down before — when we thought we had the title won — now it’s going to be about playing hard every game.

“All the teams we play will have something to fight for. They’re not going to let us have it easy. It’s going to be like a cup final every week until we have the title wrapped up.”