{"id":28333,"date":"2026-08-07T09:24:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/meridian-4-1-kirkby-opening-day\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T09:24:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:24:40","slug":"meridian-4-1-kirkby-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/meridian-4-1-kirkby-opening-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Meridian 4\u20131 Kirkby Town: a flying start to the season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meridian opened the season with four goals for the first time since 1988. Marchetti scored twice, Ndiaye and Whitfield once each, and Kirkby Town\u2019s late reply from Hendry did nothing to spoil an afternoon Kingsway Park had waited all summer for.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first came inside seven minutes, Marchetti turning in Bekele\u2019s cross at the near post. Ndiaye doubled it before half-time with a shot from twenty yards that Kirkby\u2019s keeper saw late.<\/p>\n\n<h3 id=\"second-half-control\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Second-half control<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whitfield made it three on 61 minutes from a corner and Marchetti added the fourth from the spot after Reeve was tripped. <strong>Kirkby did not have a shot on target until Hendry\u2019s consolation in the 87th minute.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou want the first day to tell you something. It told me the players had a good summer.\u201d<\/p><cite>Rafael Duarte, head coach<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n<h3 id=\"notes\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notes<\/h3>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The first four-goal opening day since the 1988 title season.<\/li><li>Marchetti\u2019s two goals took eleven minutes together.<\/li><li>Attendance of 11,860, the highest opening-day crowd for nine years.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Westport away follows next Saturday.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four goals on the opening day, two of them Marchetti\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_spx_person_id":0,"_spx_fixture_id":28228,"_spx_pick_id":0,"_spx_eg_facts_label":"","_spx_eg_facts":"","_spx_figure_caption":"","_spx_news_feat":"","_spx_video_url":"","_spx_duration":"","_spx_views":"","_spx_presenter":"","_spx_media_state":"","_spx_start_at":"","_spx_media_status":"","_spx_episode":"","_spx_subject":"","_spx_subject_role":"","_spx_story_year":"","_spx_duration_seconds":0,"_spx_view_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[230],"spx_comp":[],"spx_fixture_ref":[],"spx_series":[],"spx_format":[],"spx_video_kind":[],"spx_show":[],"spx_sport":[],"spx_flag":[],"class_list":["post-28333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-match-reports","tag-premier-division"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_comp","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_comp?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_fixture_ref","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_fixture_ref?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_series?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_format?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_video_kind","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_video_kind?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_show","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_show?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_sport","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_sport?post=28333"},{"taxonomy":"spx_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_flag?post=28333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}