Macca's Match Report:
Lads
Saturday’s game was a disjointed affair which ended in the right (and fair) result but we made hard work of it, as is the Potten End way!
On a lovely sunny afternoon on a fantastic pitch there was no excuse not to stroke the ball around and we started in great form. A number of flowing moves demonstrated the ability and skill within the team and after a great build up the ball landed to Johnny breaking into the area, who took a lovely first touch and then decided to place his shot into the corner –the ping of the post as it ricocheted off it into the opposite corner showed Johnny had got his angles spot on but maybe just aim half a foot inside the post next time when faced with an open goal mate, just to save me from having a heart murmur…
We totally lost concentration once the goal went in. The collective attitude seemed to be that we would walk the game and effort dwindled, particularly when we lost the ball. Two scrappy, scrambled goals when we didn’t clear our lines and we didn’t close down saw us go in a half-time 2-1 down – and we had only ourselves to blame.
The second half started much better, we kept the ball and worked much harder when defending. Dan, suffering from a heavy cold, left the pitch after 60 mins and super-sub Rahul came on. We continued to dominate and more good passing led to a great weaving run from Alki who, once again, played a sweet pass across goal when he could have been greedy. A fantastic finish from Dale hit first time into the corner and the comeback was on.
Within minutes a sweet through ball from Dale saw Rahul burst past their defender and a well-placed cross flew into Global’s six yard box. In slow motion their centre back looked up, swung his right foot back to full extension and blasted the ball into the top of the net – even I might have been tempted to swing my left peg at that one and that is saying something. A poor defending error but a great run and ball in from Rahul, and Alki waiting for the tap in behind the defender, put him under the pressure that lead to the goal…good stuff
A few more chances went begging, and only an excellent save/block from Frenchie prevented a late equaliser – it would have been unfair to not win the game but it did demonstrate the constant danger of only being ahead by one goal.
The most encouraging thing is that I don’t think we have hit even 50% of our potential yet and we are winning games – if we can click and focus we will be very, very difficult to beat this year. I’m genuinely excited at how good we could be, but it won’t come without effort
