After last week’s disappointing display, we came to Mayflower Sec to face our nemesis, Gaza. We have never beaten them before in all our meetings. And that stretches a long time back. Sherman piped in to say we have beaten them before but it was so long ago, nobody remembers when. When we finally managed to get into the grounds, we found out that due to their lack of players, Gaza is joining forces with Papalona to field a team. Another nemesis as we have also never beaten Papalona. Manager stressed that this will be the day where we banish the voodoo.
With 18 players, manager was spoilt for choice and duly named his 1st 11. Same formation but the return of our youngsters buoyed our confidence. Not sure was it us or the opponents were getting used to one another. We were on the front foot so much that it was only a matter of time, we got the ball in. And we did. But the referee chalked off so many of our goals or attempts, that we desperately need VAR assistance to score. We were very disturbed by the referee decisions and whining away. We shrugged that off and finally scored when Pikachu got on the end of a long pass from Max, bashed his way through 2 challenges and placed it in the near post. Good determination from our little monster. We continued to attack and Gaza had no answer to us. A run down the right by Harold (yes, he really ran down the line instead of coming to the middle), crosses and Patrick had an easy tap in. Harold was having a field day and was put through on goal. One on one, he chose to make the goalkeeper looked good by allowing to save his shot. But look who popped up? Manager was there promptly to lash the ball high into the goal. 3-0 up and Manager decided to give game time to all. In one of the rare chances that Gaza went through, Sherman pulled off a great 1 vs 1 stop. The rebound then went out for a goal kick. Gaza seemed to have found some way forward. And from a long cross field ball to our left, a cross to the middle was missed by everyone and their player snuck in at the far post to head it in via an acute angle. 3-1 halftime.
Nothing much was said at the break as the manager was clearly pleased with what he saw. It appeared to be good preparation for the start of the league next week.
2nd half began and off we go. We didn’t continue our good performance in the 1st half and allowed Gaza to dominate possession and much more chances. We struggled to keep the ball and pass properly. But a nice run from Yiong down the left saw him pull it back to Max. He took his time. Shuffled to his right and pinged the ball right into the bottom right corner. No chance keeper! Our last goal came from a long throw. It was flicked on by Patrick and Andy arrived and got there ahead of 2 defenders to thrash it into the net. We had a lot more chances but failed to find the net again. Game ended with us winning 5-1 and finally ending our run without victory against Gaza.
League starts next week and it’s time to translate our good results in the recent weeks to that platform. Let’s do it boys.
Oh, I missed a penalty.
