On a warm and beautiful evening at The Belmont, Whitstable welcomed Ryman premier league Maidstone for their 6th pre-season friendly and there are still three more to come. Eagerly anticipated by some, the game was slightly disappointing on the whole despite the goal fest in the second half. But to be fair, a number of new faces are still trying to gel together and with time, it is hoped, the scrapiness will eventually be ironed out.

Maidstone looked the more organised from the off and within 3 minutes of the start, Whitstable gave away the ball from a throw-in forcing a good save from Fewell. The warning shot jolted The Oystermen into action and a minute later Adcock, filling in at right back, crossed a nice ball into the Maidstone penalty area which the keeper spilled. He was perhaps unsighted by the low sun, but their tidy full back cleared up the spillage. Tom Parker started more brightly than he has over the past few games, but unfortunately his game deteriorated over time although he did put in a couple of nice tackles.

On 21 minutes, Ian Pulman put Dave Cory through. Cory, who was behind two Maidstone defenders, burst through and was clear on goal only to be struck in the face in the penalty area. He fell to the ground (possibly a little theatrically) and the referee saw nothing wrong. The incident wound him up and his game positively took off. He wisely decided against taking retribution!

For the next ten minutes, Whitstable reverted to unproductive use of the long ball which invariably resulted in the ball returning to Maidstone's possession. On the half hour mark, the tricky Maidstone forward, Tiesse, shot just wide of goal and a minute later, Adock misjudged a floated cross from the right which was headed back across goal, but a waiting Pinnock headed straight into Fewell's grateful arms.

In the middle of the park Perona hustled and his distribution was the only real inventiveness on show from the players in red. It was from this point of the game that Parker started lofting balls harmlessly into Walker's arms.

On 39 minutes, Whitstable won a free kick which was flighted nicely to Campbell, up from the back. His header across goal was too high for Cory, and Gess behind him was probably unsighted. But like Liam Quinn (who was not in the team today having played yesterday), Campbell shows that he can be just as threatening in the air from set-pieces. I was impressed by his calm approach to the game and on performances thus far he seems an ideal partner for Quinn.

Not to be completely outdone, Whitstable won a free kick almost immediately after the restart, but the free-kick whizzed over the bar. Apart from Addie missing an almost identical cross-box header (showing a lack of positioning), that was that for the first half and Maidstone looked in complete control of the game.

From the kick-off in the second half, Tiesse took advantage of a team that seemed still to be in the dressing room, but his shot from the right went just wide. Perhaps realizing that the back line wasn't all there, it took Jake Gess to track back a minute later to put in a last ditch tackle and a minute after that he was at the other end taking advantage of Nathan Paul's failure to deal with a Jack Tanner cross, but his shot-cum-cross whizzed out.

On 55 minutes, the speedy Tiesse broke free again, this time from the left and forced yet another good save from Fewell. But a mere minute thereafter, he got his reward as he scored their second of the game. I didn't see it as I was looking at my pictures...

The goal led to a change of personnel as Rob Thomas came on for Adcock and Michael Holliday (the No.17 from the Deal report) for Clint Gooding. The latter had been fairly anonymous up to this point in time - maybe the boot he received in his face towards the beginning of the game had affected his confidence? What Holliday did, he did with the minimum of fuss and he was involved in Whitstable's goal which came only 4 minutes later courtesy of Dave Cory and some good work by Jack Tanner on the right.

It only took 5 minutes for Maidstone to pull two clear again with a well-taken goal by Wilfort from the right hand side and edge of the area. Maidstone then forced Whitstable to chase the game and Whitstable really struggled to regain possession and had to endure wave after wave of Maidstone attacking play. Fewell was yet again called on to make a number of good saves including an excellent double save.

On 70 minutes, Pullie sliced his shot, but it looped in such a way that the keeper had to make an acrobatic save of what would have been a freak goal. To me it looked like it was going well out, so I didn't get a picture. Apologies!

With Kevin Fewell continuing to keep the visitors out, Whitstable took heart and on 78 minutes Jack Tanner found himself in space on the right and superbly lobbed the on-rushing Walker with the outside of his right foot.

In the final minute Tanner took over free-kick duties and floated a good one onto Campbell's head who despite being squeezed between two Maidstone players managed to head home for another decent Whitstable goal.