What a beautiful morning to be playing Sunday League Football on Tooting Bec Common against Westminster Wonderers. What a difference 24 hours had made? On the Saturday morning I was told we were struggling for a starting 11, but somehow Taxi had 14 players to choose from. This was mainly down to Terry who bent over backwards to get the players there including the impressive centre half James Holder.
Before seeing the opposition we didn’t know what to expect, but didn’t think that it was going to be POSH WHITE BOYS like it turned out to be. We all knew that they weren’t top of their top league for nothing, so we couldn’t take anything for granted.
From kick off we played some good football across the middle and easily took control of the game. We had the first attempt at goal which fell to Rooney. It came from an excellent outside of the boot pass from TERRY. Everyone was shocked by the quality of the pass that put Darren through on goal, he squared the ball to his fellow strike partner Rooney whose effort flew wide.
We were unlucky not to take the lead but this gave Westminster the kick they needed. To be fair over the next 20 or so minutes they pushed and pushed. If it wasn’t for the outstanding on the day Bradley between the sticks we could have been 2 or 3 down. He pulled off some quality saves! Not bad for a natural outfield player!!!
0 – 0 Half time
There wasn’t any kind of tactics spoken at half time which was disappointing, but Taxi said to everyone to keep on digging in and our luck would change. He also made a straight swap in bringing on Lynchy for Darren on the left.
We got off the mark shortly after kick off. Our all time top goal scorer Rooney made and finished it ALL himself. He picked the ball up outside the area with his back to goal. He turned and nut-megged the defender in one quick move, Rooney was through on goal and decided to shoot from 25 yards. Everyone’s reaction was the same cos they knew he was through on goal “GREEDY B*******”, but to Rooney’s relief it nestled into the bottom left corner. Quality strike and well deserved cos he had run his heart out to this point.
Westminster again then took back control of the game. They put us under constant pressure for the last 30 minute of the game. We defended well as a team and limited Westminster to the odd shot from outside the box, nothing troubling Brad in goal. With about 5 minutes to go Stocky pulled a calf muscle and had to be substituted with Adam. It became desperate defending at this point and then Westminster got a LUCKY fluke deflection. The ball landed at the feet of their striker on the goal line who toe poked it over the line. Me and Terry swear that he was a mile off-side but the flag stayed down.
The goal was the last kick of the game!!!!
TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT FOR US!!! But a draw would have been a fair result!!
ROLL ON EXTRA TIME …
We knew that fitness was going to be an issue in the extra time period but Taxi only had Del on the bench to make his outfield debut. Westminster train on Tuesdays and play 5 aside on Thursdays so we knew they were fitter than half our beer bellied team.
We had to keep it tight from kick off but failed miserably. Westminster broke down the left from kick off and managed to cross the ball across goal for their striker to poke home. Bradley never stood a chance! We picked our heads up and created probably our best chance of the game. Rooney linked with Ben T which put Ben through on goal. His effort was well saved by their keeper’s outstretched legs.
Westminster went straight up the other end and scored “The Goal Of The Day”. Their Midfielder picked the ball up in the centre circle and ran through unchallenged. His shot from 25 yards fired into the TOP RIGHT corner, absolute screamer!
We were totally out of the game at this point and the chasing shadows had taken its toll! (Especially on me!) Everyone was playing out of position and we had run out of ideas when I made a silly mistake that gifted their substitute striker a goal. I completely mistimed a header that gave Westminster “game, set and match”!!!!
Next week hopefully we can get the likes of Barry, Rhys, Michael W and Nick back into the squad to help us out of this bad period of time!!
