Northwood Reds 1-3 Pinnacle
Player of the match Ben Freeh
In a match that was delayed 15 minutes due to Pinnacle only having 4 players at the allocated start time. So when the match was eventually started it was agreed that the game would only be 20 minutes each way as there was also pitch congestion as 4 teams all arrived for a 10am KO.
This week again we were short of defensive players, so again players were asked to play out of their preferred positions which they all did very well. The game was a bad tempered affair with the referee having to constantly speak to Pinnacle players about dissent and bad foul play and this again did seem to effect the boys.
We did start brightly by taking the lead in the 7th minute form a long range effort from Frankie that bounced in front of the Pinnacle goal keeper and the ball seemed to slip through his hands and into the net. The lead as last week was pegged back within a couple of minutes when the boys got caught out attacking and Pinnacle broke and scored as they outnumbered Northwood defence. We came in at half time 1-1 and the boys were told to tighten up the tackling and to keep their shape.
We did start the second half slowly again as last week and again were punished when Pinnacle got their second from another Northwood error, The game then did seem to break down as the verbal's and persistent fouling from Pinnacle went to another level, and when the Pinnacle linesman was sent from the pitch, I knew that it was going to be one of those sort of days.
The game was going from end to end with both teams making chances but we were not making the most of ours or the wrong options were being made in the final third meaning the move was breaking down. Eventually Pinnacle made the most of one of their chances and went 3-1 up, this did spark in my opinion some bad taste over the top celebrations by a number of the Pinnacle teams who were trying to openly bait our boys into some sort of reaction. Again the referee had to step in .
The game did end 3-1 to Pinnacle and again the Pinnacle players at the end of the game were trying to spark some reaction from our boys.
Line up: Rayyan, George, Ben B, Ben F, Lewis Reid, Ashley, Declan, Frankie, Joshua, Saihaan.
