Our second match in the group stage saw us travel to Lenadoon to play a well organised S.O.P.F.C. who played so well against us they could easily hold their own in the Premier Division!
Still with players out injured we had to get down to business without them but we struggled to get any rhythm in to our game and couldn’t string three passes together and the first half came and went without much happening.
HALF TIME : 0.0
The second half started promisingly and we looked as though we were getting it together and we took the lead in 41st minute when Matthew Guest threaded a passes through to Rhys Mackie as he ran from his own half of the pitch and ran through on the keeper to put the ball into the back of the Net 1 : 0 Ards. Rhys should have doubled his goal tally 5 minutes later when again he was one on one with the keeper but hit his shot straight at the keeper. Then the game started to fissile out and we found ourselves on the back foot again, then ten minutes from the end came the comedy of errors which would cost us all three points. In the 61st minute we played the ball back across our own box and as the striker nipped in he was fouled resulting in Plunketts being awarded a penalty but what Plunketts didn’t know is Jai Sykes makes a habit of saving penalties and as the Plunketts penalty taker hit a very good penalty low to the bottom right hand corner Jai dived across to his right and pulled of a superb save to keep us in front. Then came the next one when a back pass to Jai was short and Plunketts striker nipped in again this time putting the ball into the net to level the score 1 : 1. However the boys did lift their game slightly in the last minutes and had several chances to score but run out of time.
FULL TIME : 1.1
Managers Comments:
This was probably our poorest performance to date but I will say Plunketts wanted it more than we did. We need to have a good think of what went wrong and put it right next week against Dixon Colts. I know you can do it “BELIEVE”
