Best game so far!
On a warm sunday evening Cringle Athletic faced a game against second placed Ashton West End . With both teams playing in red shirts ,coach Robin agreed that Cringle would wear bibs, meanwhile new sideline manager Jake announced the starting eleven. Despite missing Jack and Paul for this game, Cringle still had enough quality to field a very strong team and started with a very solid and attacking formation as well as a strong defence. As per usual Flrorin was in goal. In this game the centre back pairing on George and Reece renewed their training partnership to make a formidable defence, and on either side of them both Sam and Shon have settled down into the full-back positions very well. In the holding midfield position we had Dan, with Reo and Alfie playing in front of him. And upfront we had Dylan, Conor and King Duffy t score the goals. Despite being against a small breeze Cringle made some very good progress and immediately started to pass the ball around, and seemed to play with much the same passion as we do at training. However the first goal was scored by Ashton West End, after Florin passed the ball to Sam, he then tried to pass the ball back to the keeper but the ball got intercepted by an ashton player who calmly finished and made it 1-0. And Ashton continued to put pressure and created chance by chance however George , Reece and Shon kept a calm head a defended brilliantly, In the 25th minute Dan cleared the ball for a corner and Ashton West End swung it into the box, their number 9 headed it but Shon saved the ball on the line, unfortunately just a few seconds later Ashton scored again and they scored their second goal with a very similar move to the first. With Cringle defending a throw-in ,the ball once again came to their number 7, who passed it up the field to the number 11 who scored into the bottom left corner, although Florin had his fingers on it, who by the way had some fantastic saves so far .Cringle did have their moments too,shots from Conor, Samson, Robin and Dylan all going wide or being saved by the Ashtons keeper. However it didn’t take very long for Cringle to score, with the ball being played out by Florin, to Shon, who laid it down the line to Conor, who smartly turned his marker and crossed the ball into the area, where Robin controlled it, and finally the ball ended up at the feet of Conor, who scored a magnificent volley just outside the box .Gull replaced the injured Dan, who went off with a head injury after hitting his head against the post. But Cringle needed to be careful,because despite bringing the difference to one goal , Ashton could easily score the 3-1 and in the last minutes of the first half it happened. Gull was meant to play in holding midfield but ended up playing on the wing and after a miscalculated pass off him Ashton scored a goal. Manager Jake took off Alfie and replaced him with Ryan, and Dylan dropped into midfield, furthermore Samson replaced Sam. The last goal would surely have lifted the home side for the second half, but it was once again Cringle who came out quickest and immediately put pressure on the Ashton defence, with Reo, Gull and Dylan in central midfield taking control of the game and laying the ball off to their team mates. The second half saw wave after wave of Cringle pressure and attacks, and the home side were virtually penned in their own half. Cringle eventually scored the 3-2 after a nice ball of Ryan, Robin sprinted into the box and laid the ball of to Conor who scored his second goal of the game. This was a much more comfortable game than the score-line suggests, especially in the second half with Cringle having at least eight shots on target, all being saved by the Ashtons keeper, with many others going just wide.
However after 75 minutes played , you could see that some players got tired and they stopped tracking back. And when you stop playing football you will concede goals and so it happened, after a cross from their number 7, Alfie ( replaced the injured Gull) unfortunately scored an own goal, after that we started playing with 3 defenders and Reko replaced Conor just to have a holding midfielder, however that didn't work out and we conceded two more goals. After 90 minutes of football the final score was 6-2
Cringle players can be very pleased with their contribution in this game and should take this form into their next tough test against Audenshaw Athletic.
Men of the Match are Shon for fantastic defending, Conor for scoring two wonderful goals and Florin for doing some ridiculous saves
I will see you all next week
THE KING DUFFY
