GU12 17-Feb-07: Oswald Rd 4-3 Partington Village (HT 2-2)

This was a very strange game. No-one played badly individually – when they had the ball near them, everyone played well but off the ball most players looked sound asleep. Excuses included having had a sleepover (so only getting four hours sleep) and still recovering from flu but as a team we played like we had never seen each other before. And to make it worse, Partington had improved.

We started well and scored our fastest ever goal when SophieA smacked in a goal on 30 seconds after some very good passes from Katie to Tara to Ruqayyah who laid the ball off for Sophie. Maybe it was this good start which led us to be so complacent and stop trying too hard – Partington must have thought it was Christmas, the way we kept letting them back into the game. They duly equalised after 3 minutes. We kept on attacking and SophieA scored again at the 5 minute mark from a pass by Katie. We then had an end-to-end period where we mounted lots of attacks but were thwarted by their excellent goalie (their player of the match) and defence, and they kept on launching attacks on our goal – which they either hit wide or we somehow cleared away (believe me, the clearing was somewhat haphazard). I don’t know how the game went more than five minutes without a goal at either end but the next goal didn’t come until the 27^th minute – unfortunately, it was Partington who scored.

The second half started brilliantly again for us, as Katie took the ball off a Partington attacker after just one minute and went past four players from midfield to attack and scored! Goal of the match! Sigh, but then we went back to our bad old ways and stopped trying to be first to the ball. Partington’s greater aggression on the ball soon got them yet another equaliser. This carried on and our players kept losing their positions – their attackers were often 3 on 1 against poor SophieP but somehow they kept missing as our other defenders kept rushing back to put pressure on them and Becks in goal kept blocking all their shots. There then followed a period of the match where I had never seen a team miss so many chances as we did – except later that day when I saw Man United draw 1-1 against Reading despite having as many chances as we did. Hey, if Ronaldo and Saha can miss ‘easy’ chances then so can we!

Finally, when the spectators’ nerves were frayed to breaking point by yet another miss from us followed by an attack from Partington just going wide, we launched an attack and Tara passed to Katie who finally smacked the ball into the net for the final time in the 27^th minute of the second half. Phew! We were glad that was finally over.

Kamal

Team: SophieA, Tara, Ruqayyah, Zoë, SophieP, Katie, Rebecca
Goals (& Assists): 1^st half – SofiA (Ruq), SofiA (Katie)
2^nd half – Katie (), Katie (Tara)
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Tara
Managers’ Player of the Match: Zoe