Hat-trick Takes Mesner To A Century Of Accies Career Goals

We lost the match on Thursday night – our 400th ever 11-a-side, incidentally – but there was a celebration on the night nonetheless.  At the start of the match, Effra had two joint leading all-time scorers: Joe Sene and Simon Mesner, tied on 97 goals each.  90 minutes later and Simon had not only leapt ahead of Joe, but had also become the first Accie to reach 100 goals for the club.

Simon's goalscoring prowess is particularly impressive when you consider that for a good while, he was employed in 11-a-sides as a centre back.  This may seem odd to anyone who's only been with the club for five years or less, but as a defender I can assure you that we would've shipped a LOT more goals without Simon's steadying influence at the back.  But it's been a great pleasure to see Simon playing in forward positions, which have clearly suited him far better and allowed him to score a literal ton of goals.

Simon shows off his Players' Player Of The Year award in 2007

Only injuries have prevented Si from getting to 100 much sooner, in particular in 2011 when he barely featured up front.  But since he made his debut for the club on 26 January 2001, it's been marvellous to see Simon consistently putting in a high level of performance for the club, both at 5-a-side level (mainly for Dinamo Bar Pitch and Inter Effra, back during the era when we were split into two 5-a-side squads) and in 11-a-sides.  I imagine that among Simon's career highlights for the club would be the whole of 2007, when Simon formed a lethal strike partnership with former Effra player Gary White.  Simon contributed to a mighty 37-goal total between the pair and really enjoyed playing alongside Gary.  More recently, in 2009 he won the Golden Boot with 14 goals.  And just last year, he proved that he's still a force to be reckoned with, scoring an Accies career best 15 goals in the calendar year.  He has 8 so far in 2013 – an impressive total considering that competition has probably never been fiercer for the striking positions.  Our current goals-per-game total is 3.32 and if we keep that up, it'll be our best ever.

You'll have to ask Simon which have been his favourite goals among the 100 - knowing him, he can describe most, if not all of them! Two of his goals on Thursday night were truly excellent – one a fine long-range finish and one from an extremely narrow angle, in off the far post.  For what it's worth, in my opinion his best was the headed goal which made it 3-3 in the closing minutes of the Anglo-Dutch Cup in September 2007, having been 3-0 down.  We went on to win the match 9-3 in extra time and as far as I'm concerned Simon's goal was the greatest in the entire history of football!  The other 99 weren't bad either.

Simon's Accies stats in full are:
All-time - played 375, scored 100
11-a-side for Effra Academicals - played 238, scored 73
11-a-side for Inter Effra - played 1, scored 0
9-a-side for Effra Academicals - played 4, scored 0
5-a-side for Effra Academicals - played 8, scored 4
5-a-side for Dinamo Bar Pitch - played 84, scored 9
5-a-side for Inter Effra - played 40, scored 14

Our next centurion will either be Joe Sene, currently on 97 goals as mentioned above, or Sam Herbert, currently on 89 goals.  88 of Sam's 89 goals are from Accies 11-a-side games, so he's odds-on favourite to become our first 11-a-side centurion.

For now, congratulations on behalf of the whole club to Simon for an historic century.  In his own words: "Here's to the next 100!"