Raz
5th September 2011
Goodfellas VS KCC Royal,
Line up
Raz
Shui, Bear, Flo, Garrow
Hyppo, Tony, Mark, David, Howard
Ced
Subs: Youn Sung, Julz, Maarten
Under the flood lights of kings park the fellas were off to get their 2011/2012 season under way. Since we were the last kick off of the opening weekend some of the fellas had seen the scorelines from the weekends fixtures. With some drubbings we knew we had to start strong to really get up there with the rest of the league.
The team talk done by yours truly meant there was a lot of OBAMAish motivation sentences like 'YES WE CAN'.
The main focus of the first half was to keep a high line and not allow the Royals to come out of their own half without either being offside, without shui / flo coming back to cover or for me to come out and clear the ball into touch. The flow of the game waa pretty even but fellas had surely made it a point with 5 in the middle to contain them and now allow them to pass around their midfield. One of the best chances KCC had in the first half was when after a sh*t goal kick by me lead to them gaining easy possession and releasing one of their main men down the wing, who then swung in a low ground cross which I thought I had covered until the striker came in and thought my head was the ball and wanted to put it in the back of the net. That resulted in a foul but apart from that and a shot which went a couple of yards wide it was pretty smooth sailing for the back 4 in the first half. Fellas were extremely impressive as we are at the start of every season at moving the ball wide and forward, this pressure led to a free kick which was cooly converted by new boy tony o'brian If you weren't looking you wouldn't have known he scored until the team went to congratulate him due to Tony's Rafa Benitez style celebration of 'No Celebration.' Apart from that, simple pointers for the back 4 to keep themselves in line with each other was needed because that was giving the players of KCC space to run into behind us leaving a lot more work than i initially expected but I was up to the challenge.
note for the first half, I need to practice goal kicks and david needs to practice his shots from outside the box.
Even with the blood loss from the challenge in the first half I was able to give a team talk which just set a fire to the Goodfellas. Howard's choice to drop a little deeper and to play through them instead of in front of them worked very well. The communication needed some improving with incidents that caused 2 defenders go for the same ball or the midfield and defenders marking the same person from the opposition. That surely improved in the 2nd half but we also knew that KCC had nothing to lose and were going for it from the off. In the middle of the second Tony collected the ball in the midfield, looked up as he's moving towards goal and tired his luck from distance. The strike was too strong for the keeper to deal with, the ball dropping on the underside of the bar, 2-0 fellas and Tony again No celebrations. I assume that Hyppo was pissed off at the amount of attention our new boy was getting and he wanted in on the act as well with a 'What you can do, I can also do.' Hyppo took the ball and from a similar distance and area of the pitch also smashed one which the keeper parried but only into the back of the net making the lead 3-0. We weren't done then, with 10 or so mins left the fellas made it 4-0 with some great work as Ced got the ball and burnt a player or two before hitting the by-line and placing the ball along the ground for hypo to tap in.
A good win but lets not forget that they were a pretty old team and the game was a lot harder than the scoreline says.
Good start to the season! Lets keep it going!
