Would rather Sutton than Woking but yeah, the fact it is at Meadowbank is a bit on the boring side.

Dorking 2-0 Merstham (McShane, Murphy)

                         Norman

        Brooking    Francomb    Gale

McManus    Williams     Moore    Norville-Williams

                           Young

                 Murphy     McShane

Sutton with their fancy Powergrass pitch would be my preference too, but you can see why SFA use Meadowbank for all the finals

There appears to be a bit of a fixture backlog in this competition, so we could be waiting a while for our semi final.

Leatherhead semi, then god willing a Carshalton final would be a decent enough test considering the early competition exits for Woking and Sutton

Really good workout last night. We looked the class above that we are, with (for me) Jack Young and JNW outstanding. Jack should really be starting imo.

Also good to see McShane up and running - looked fit - bar the several glaring misses!

And a crowd of over 400 is excellent for such a fixture, midweek. Credit to the Merstham fans too, must have been 150?

Posted by: @adeb

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I'll stick a prediction in 

Dorking 5 Merstham 2 (McShane, McManus, Williams, Young, Brooking)

385 

Nearly, and you got two scorers right.  Should have scored more in first half, and we put that right in second half, when extra fitness and quality counted. Thought Academy players all acquitted themselves well, and hope injury to Saunders not too bad.

Impressed that Dorking have got a good Academy and a way to first team for young talent. Thought Gale looked particularly good. Crawley don't even have a reserve or youth team (just a charity foundation linked to the club). Apparently they can't find the £100,000 cost to  run one. This means we just have to rely on the squad we have and have one less sub on the bench, due to not have any home grown players. We have to try and find young talents by our recruitment policy instead.

@dorking-eagle Walton & Hersham are by far the best side left in the competition behind us.

Kingstonian and Chertsey play their 2nd round match tonight and South Park v Croydon is in a couple of weeks. Redhill and Leatherhead play their quarter final on the same night. We then just have to wait for Carshalton and Walton to play their quarter finals against the respective winners of the 2nd round matches which will hopefully be done by the end of March.

I would expect the semi-final to take place roughly around the 1st April.

Posted by: @calvertskans

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@dorking-eagle Walton & Hersham are by far the best side left in the competition behind us.

Kingstonian and Chertsey play their 2nd round match tonight and South Park v Croydon is in a couple of weeks. Redhill and Leatherhead play their quarter final on the same night. We then just have to wait for Carshalton and Walton to play their quarter finals against the respective winners of the 2nd round matches which will hopefully be done by the end of March.

I would expect the semi-final to take place roughly around the 1st April.

 

Carshalton are in really good form and just outside the playoffs, so are the second best team other than Dorking, but I would still think Dorking should be strong favourites for this Cup. However, promotion is far more important.

@crawleysth Walton & Hersham are the same level as Carshalton (Step 3) but in a different league. They currently sit 4th in that league and realistically would be higher but are unfortunate to be in the same league as Totton and Merthyr.

I would much rather play Carshalton than Walton & Hersham tbh. It is also much easier to get to if we get either of them away!

If we avoid both Walton and Carshalton, I think we could comfortably win this cup even if we rest most of the first team like we did last night. Really hope the final gets put in a sensible date this year though.

Enjoyable evening and much better crowd than I was expecting. Good away following too.

Thought we kept the ball well and moved it around nicely, the gap in class was evident. Their only chances came from sloppy play from us.

The only let down of the night was the reduced menu , so they didn’t have any Chilli and Chips which I was most looking forward to 😂

After lavishing fulsome praise on Macca (despite his two early howlers in front of goal), the Gaffer then tore shreds off Hayden Gayle and Jay Richardson (two of our best young prospects) for a couple of minor errors. Why did he have to do that in front of camera?