The Vale finally got their first league win of the season, with a fairly emphatic 5-1 win over lowly Queens Head. With a quite nicely balanced side out, and with Silk back to marshal the defence, the Vale started brightly and instantly began creating chances. We squandered a few, but took the lead when Kie knocked the ball across goal, a defender got a slight touch but the ball fell to Young Sam, who took a while but eventually knocked the ball past the keeper. Sam got the second goal of the game as he played Jim in down the channel who played the ball back across to Sam, who again finished well. 2-0 up and cruising so inevitably the Vale got sloppy and allowed Queens Head back in the game. The passing became particularly poor as people were under/over hitting everything for a 10 minute period and the ball bounced all over the place. It was during this section of the game that Queens Head equalised. A ball out wide to their right hand side was then played in and missed by several defenders...or possibly even flicked on by one of our defenders!...allowing a player to get to the ball at the back post where he knocked it past Bomo. We wobbled a little bit more, but to be fair slowly shook it off as we began passing to each other a bit more. We increased our lead before halftime, as Gaylo surged forward (fairly slowly mind!) and played in Luke on the edge of the box. Lukey doesn't miss from there, and dispatched it past the keeper....3-1. That's how it stayed till halftime.
At halftime the manager rallied his troops, with as usual no-one listening to him, and the boys were sent out being asked to do the simple stuff better as if we did there was a great chance of getting more goals and killing off the game. We played well at the start of the second half and moved the ball around much better than before. There were still some basic errors in our play, but enough good stuff to keep the team clicking along. We created a load more chances, but poor finishing or poor decision making meant we couldn't get the game killed off. Subs were made, with Jim, Kie and Sam making way for Dirky, Cookie and Gyla. We finally got the 4th that ended any hope of them getting back in the game as Luke got the ball, beat a man, drove into the box and proved himself to be a lovely young lad by not tapping it in for his second and instead squared it for Dirky who couldn't miss....although he had missed a similar one slightly earlier! There was time for one more goal, and undoubtebly the goal of the game, as Gaylo won a header (Shocking I know!) and played the ball to Jase who was just inside the Queens Head half...he looked up and smacked it over the keeper with a perfectly judged lob. The game finished 5-1. with the vale fully deserving the win.
It's fair to say that Queens Head were lacking a bit of confidence, and we played well enough to deserve the win, but we have to still improve the simple act of keeping possession, because against a better side we would have become unstuck. It'd also help a bit if we could take our chances a bit better lads!!! But I'm not going to moan too much as we've been dying for a win, and everybody worked hard and played well. No-one stood out massively (as the ratings showed) but this was a proper team performance, where everybody did their jobs well.
Despite the win I still intend to rotate the side for next weeks game....
Misc notes:
Gaylo and Silk went up for a header together (and with no attacker around) and Gaylo won it!
Luke got slapped by an opponent again!
The manager...ie me (who is a very nice man...and also a bit of an idiot) spent a bloody fortune buying the entire team a pint for getting their first win....please remember this when I rotate you out of the side one week and you want to have a moan at me!
