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We confidently travelled to Welling and recovered from an early goal to match them, equalise through Asher Hudson (pictured left) and almost grab a winner at the death, giant forward Richard Harris not seizing a glorious opportunity to score. The replay at Church Road saw the Roller of David Gold turn up and legend Teddy Sheringham to watch his son play, with a dolly bird on his arm who must surely have been his niece. I missed the game through illness and was gutted (no pun intended) to do so as Leafe took a remarkable 2-0 win with Asher and sub Rivers doing the damage.
Sadly we fell at the first hurdle in the FA Trophy at Northwood and in early October travelled to Conference South flyers Hampton & Richmond in the next round of our FA Cup campaign, the winners reaching the First Round proper [Ed: not so, the winners compete in the 4th Qualifying round]. Sadly Alan Devonshire's side were just too strong and a gallant display still saw a 2-0 loss. It was time to concentrate on the league, but we somehow lost 3-2 at Whitstable Town with a depleted midweek team, having dominated for the first half hour, although some bizarre refereeing did not help - and a missed Rivers penalty at 2-2. Rob Smith was sent off, a recurring theme this term for a number of players over the rest of the season as ill-discipline let us down again and again. We had slumped to 18th in the table.
A welcome 2-1 win over Croydon Athletic, a club about to be transformed by a bafflingly benevolent benefactor, choosing to feed the very lamest duck on the pond, gave us a lift with Scotty and Greene on target but we then slumped to successive defeats against Fleet 1-0 who used their ludicrous slope to huge advantage, Worthing 4-1 at home and Dulwich away 3-1. With Denva starting to struggle with fitness and Scotty the Fireman not always on duty Manager Massey turned to his old favourite Andrew "Taff" Martin. Taff scored after just seven minutes in his return game against Worthing, but they were a strong side that overwhelmed us, notably Jamie Brotherton and our very own Chris O'Flaherty doing the damage.
Nicky Geene had been hugely impressive on the left wing since arriving, the Scouts came flocking and an inevitable move higher, to Fisher Athletic was to follow. Two new additions to the fold were combative right sided Sol Patterson-Bohner, the attractions for manager Massey not immediately obvious to plebs like me and Michael Harney who slotted into the left-back role with Macca pushed further forward filling the void left by Greene.
Now in early November there were brief fireworks with a narrow 1-0 win over Walton Casuals, Denva once again and a pleasing 3-0 thumping of troubled Burgess Hill, including a Taff brace, but our yo-yo season continued as a thoroughly professional Cray brought as back down, before a 0-0 draw with Ashford Town, another club on the brink of financial disaster.
Another huge but inevitable loss to the club was keeper Rob Tolfrey who had carried on last season's outstanding form, catching the eye of many clubs. Rob plumped for joining Horsham where he has excelled once more and comes back to watch the Leafe when he can. In the giant footsteps of James "Wassa" Wastell he is a Leafe legend. In came young keeper Matt Mann from Godalming Town and a new song was plotted by Mrs Kelly to the Batman theme, simply "Nananananananananana Matt Mann!" but it was never heard as a very disappointing and rather charmless Leafe career came and went. Sorry, but if you upset the Parking Steward here it's game over 
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