gU13 01-Dec-07:
Awaiting match report.
Once again, we were looking forward to our first game with a full team… and then reality gave us a series of cruel blows – Sophie was away at her brother’s party or something, Rudi was staying with relatives and Zoe was swimming at the club championships (won 5 trophies, well done Zoe J). So we were down to 7 players. Then during the warm up, someone used Roisin for target practice and she twisted her knee trying to dodge the ball so she was off for the first half, and we were down to six! Aaaaaaarrrrggghh!!
However, only having six in the first half really seemed to concentrate the players’ minds and they played extremely well, always backing up each other and passing the ball around well. In the first fifteen minutes, Deans got through three times through localised overloading of our defence. Then followed a period when we played unbelievably well, stopping all Deans’ attacks and even putting together a few of our own with just our six and Katie’s good goal kicks – we had a few attacks but just the lack of a killer shot stopped us from scoring. After fifteen minutes of this, Kenesha got onto the ball down the left and ran down the wing (about the third time she’d done this) fighting past their defenders, Becky made a good run into the centre and Kenesha managed to get in an excellent cross to Becky but before Becky got to the ball, a Deans defender stretched for the ball and knocked it past her own goalkeeper! We gave the goal to Kenesha as it was her shot that caused the mistake. Deans were a little upset at letting in a goal against 6 players and attacked all out for the last five minutes of the game, managing to get a goal in the last minute of the game.
In the second half we switched Katie out of goal into midfield and put Becky into goal. Roisin was still a little shaky on her legs but wanted to play so we were back to 7 players (against 9) and we had, in theory, a stronger midfield (and weaker attack). We should have done even better but Deans obviously had a good half time talk and came out passing the ball out much more to take better advantage of their numerical superiority and we relaxed a little too much and tried to attack instead of playing it steady in midfield and taking our chances when we got them. So we left the defenders much more exposed even though Ruqayyah ran like a daemon blocking, tackling and clearing. Shaye and Tara were left too often facing two or three attackers as our midfield tired and came back slower and slower from attack. In the end we were too tired to stop every attack and though Becky saved a lot of shots and got more 1-on-1 practice (sorry Becks), she couldn’t stop them all.
An encouraging game just for the coolness we showed under pressure and the passing game we displayed for a short while. We just need to do it more often and for longer.
Goals: Kenesha(Ruqayyah) 30’
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Ruqayyah Hashmi
Managers’ Player of the Match: Tara Chrystal
Team: (fwd) nowt (mid) Kenesha, Rebecca(c), Roisin, (def) Shaye, Ruqayyah,
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