Mens 3 vs Cambridge South 3

With Dave Ranner showing up 10 minutes early for his debut captain for this season, spirits were lifted and it felt like there was hope for a good game after a 9-0 defeat at the start of the season. Now i believe the team chat mainly emphasized: tracking back and not running into flat sticks. This is important for what we obviousely did very well at. 

South started push back and kept to their usual fast passing and eliminating players which caught us out leading to their first goal of the game. To keep things consistent, thats when we switched on and started to play. For the first 15 mins things were fairly equal and mainly we kept to the team talk. From a counter we managed to pass around them and enter the uprade to a short! But unfortunately nothing came of it. However, we stayed switched on and manaeged to win another short corner. This time we went rout 1 via JW, he took his time which unsettled the keeper allowing him to score bottom right corner, 

Now we head back to our objectives. As we tired, which happens, we started to run into a little more flat sticks and our positioning started to deteriorate. we started to play very straight and narrow up the right side of the pitch and due to the less space, it became very easy for us to be man marked and the leads became harder to see. At half time it remained 1-1 although South did have more chances than us. 

At half time we discussed the leads and re-leads to try and focus on getting the ball past our back line and into the midfield. Although with Ranner being early i think it threw us off rather than helping our game play haha. We went into the second half exactly like we ended the first. Without some excellent saves from Adam it definitely would have been a more distant scoreline (although maybe don't deflect the ball into someones face next time). Souths second goal was much disputed. But only by JT. Essentially it was a 2-1 against him and he stepped on the ball to stop the pass. Personally i think it was a brilliant piece of defending coming from an unbiased point of view. But despite him stopping the ball with the ball of his foot, a penalty flick was given making the socreline 2-1. 

The rest of the game was pretty similar in the sense that we played badly and South didnt and our defence managed to keep it a clean game after that. 

Honorable mentions go to Aaron for his second green card and continuous stick tackles and an arm on the shoulder, which he desevedly got an elbow in response. The second goes to Jacob for "slipping" and giving away a short for a deliberate stick tackle in the 23. I kinda also have to mention myself as i got DOD for coming off, feeling faint due to not eating before the game - but i also got MOM so i guess i did well without eating???

Anyway end of macth score was 2-1 defeat, scorer was JW.