The Week after our first win our spirits were high. Sadly the result didn’t do justice to the effort and performance that the team put in.
We were missing two key players in our Goal keeping Goliath of Bob and the engine room that is Weasel (though I’m informed that they were out boozing it up! Well at least they’re following in the footsteps of professionals). We had the hired talents of James friend Toby up front who got our goal played very well so cheers for that Toby.
In the first half we had the majority of the possession and kept the pressure on the opposition bad sadly we couldn’t capitalise on it. Time after time our attack faulted and broke on the defence. On the plus side they were having similar problems against our defence with the Ben combo mopping up and redistributing most of the attacks. Unluckily we went a goal down early on though special mention should go to our stand in goalkeeper Mr Adam Whincup who put in a magnificent effort in goal and was rewarded with some super saves; he got better as his confidence grew. We did however miss his tenacious tackling in midfield.
Our forwards of James and Toby stuck to the game plan and got behind the oppositions defence time and time again forcing the opposing keeper in some brilliant save before Toby got our goal. There was some great interplay and Brazilian style passing between our front men and Chris who tirelessly patrolled the left flank breaking down the wing to create chances and support the front two.
Ben. H had another solid game being big, strong and rock like in the centre of defence. The main positive this week was his calmness on the ball which gave him time to pick his pass. Ben. F started in defence and then pushed up in the second half leaving the subs to fill in the defence gaps.
We were unlucky not to get a better result especially in front of our biggest crowd, 4 people!! The main problem was a lack of cohesion within the team the passes weren’t sticking and some of the decision making wasn’t great, this was throughout the team. It could have been because of tiredness or just that our confidence after last week had grown but we didn’t play as well as we did last week. There were some stand our performances such as James tracking back the length of the pitch to make an outstanding last ditch tackle to deny the opposition a shot on goal! Also, as I have already mention Mr Harris’s calm defending; finally Adam’s shouting was an aural delight.
One of the downsides was decision making last night. We seemed to play as a group of individuals rather than a team, on numerous people chose to take a man when an easier pass would have allowed them to get past their marker before receiving the ball back in the fashion of the old 1 2. But there you go, if we make the ball do the work then we don’t have to, of course I’m aware that we have only played as a team for a few months and it may take time but we need to be aware of our options. There was plenty of good movement through the team and people were getting into wonderful positions sadly we weren’t always using them which I think everyone got frustrated about and because of this the noise level (apart from Adam) dropped people weren’t speaking to each other or if they were people didn’t hear them, more chatter guys lets help each other out.
A note to Bob, Adam commented on how difficult it is to see people when performing a goal kick of throwing the ball out. Could we please have someone who comes short? Maybe something to think about.
