White Ensign finally brought the curtain down on an extraordinary season on the last day of May when they completed their Essex Intermediate League soccer campaign with a 2-0 win at a Herongate side who needed to triumph to avoid relegation from Senior Division Two.
Southend based Ensign, whose capture of the championship in their first season as an intermediate club was one of five major honours during the term, rewrote the record books.
For they are the first team in the Intermediate League's history to ever go a whole season without losing in either League or League Cup.
Saturday's success, in boiling hot conditions, saw Chris Baddeley give them a 13th minute lead when set-up by Paul Benson. And a second-half effort from the on the day inappropriately named Alan Frost made certain of the points despite a spirited opposition display.
Frost was brought on as a second-half substitute and, having scored most of his goals in the club's second team, who won Reserve Division Three, finally tied with Tommy Gunning of Debden Sports as the League's top marksman. The two will share the Golden Boot award.
It's been another campaign to remember for an Ensign side managed by Steve Linge with assistance from Sinclair Watson.
The pair have masterminded a superb team effort and have managed to keep a very strong 16-man squad happy despite the difficulties of knowing who to put on the bench each week.
Before joining the Intermediate set-up, Ensign had been a dominating factor in the Southend Borough Combination for a number of years and you have to go back to November 1999 for when they were last defeated in any kind of league game.
That setback was at the hands of now defunct Newton Hall, who ironically beat them 3-1 with a hat-trick from Paul Benson, a striking star who has long since joined his two brothers at Ensign to play a leading part in their glory story.
Ensign, who also enjoyed Combination success through their third team winning the Division One crown, lost only one match throughout the current campaign and that was at the hands of Old Barkabbeyians in the Essex Premier Cup.
Published Tuesday, June 3, 2003
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