Omonia Gold 9-1 Northwood Reds
Player of the Match George
This was definitely a match that we are not going to dwell on. This week again we were missing 3 players due to illness but the boys that did turn up were not at their best.
Barely had the game started and the boys found themselves 1-0 down due to some very inept defending in the middle of the parkand a somewhat lucky lob from the Omonia striker . Only 3 minutes later the boys found themselves 2 down again due to poor tackling and even worse chasing back to recover earlier mistakes this was going to be one of those days. After about 10 minutes the boys did seem to start to play a little having some good passages of play by stringing some good passes together but thefinal pass or shot was just not happening and once we lost possession it seemed like nobody wanted to win the ball back and we just let Omonia play at the own pace. After 20 minutes the ball dropped in the middle of the park after a clearance from Rayyan and again there were no Red shirts near it so the Omonia number 8 fired it back over Rayyan’s head to make it 3-0. Two minutes late the main striker for Omonia a quire skilful player seemed to run past 3-4 Northwood players and finished well to make it 4-0. The game now was as good as over but Omonia were taking no prisoners and fired in 2 more before half time to make it 6-0 at the break.
The half time talk would have included throwing tea cups if we had them ! But instead we challenged the boys to go out and win the second half and prove to themselves that they are a better team than they had shown in the first half,
The half time chat did seem to work as the boys showed a lot more intensity and work effort straight from the kick off , now passing & moving the ball well and even more encouraging they were showing some battle & fight that had been so lacking in the first half. Then on 32 minutes we got a free kick for a foul within striking range so up stepped Joshua who fired in a great free kick, the goal keeper pulled out a good save but could only parry to the oncoming Saihaan who tucked the ball away neatly 6-1 .
The goal did lift the team and they then in true style the boys thought that they could score enough to win and so started pushing on leaving gaps at the back so a long clearance from Omonia saw a lucky break off the ball on the half way line go Omonia’s way ,as everything had so far ,ended in a good solo run to get the score to 7-1. I think that this goal did really did dampen any spirits and any come back so you could see that the boys heads did drop. The boys did seem to play a lot harder in the second half but conceded another 2 goals from further counter attacks to make the final score 9-1 our worst defeat in quite a while.
There were 3-4 players that did stand out today in and todays player of the match George was one of them who had a great game in defence.
As I said at the beginning we will put this one down as a bad day and move onto the next game.
