This was a hard fought win against the team who have become our nemesis in this league and manager Dave made his feelings about our inability to beat them quite clear before the match. They share the same ground, they're a similar level to us and this is the first time we've beaten them in four competitive meetings. It was a good game, full of incident and at one point got a bit heated.
The Lions lined up as below:
Phil (GK)
Dale Simon Mike H Julian
Dave JP Mike G Richard
Brett Lee
We had a poor start in truth and in the first few minutes gave the ball away on the edge of our area for their striker to take a long range effort which had me well beaten but luckily came off the post. They continued to threaten and we struggled to get into the game. We had a hard time getting past their back four in the air as they were simply too tall and good. We needed to get it down and play football like we have been doing but it wasn't happening. The few efforts we had in the first 15 or so minutes didn't make their keeper work at all
The turning point came around the 15 minute mark. Dave's ankle problem flared up and he had been hobbling around for few minutes, which left space on the right for their attackers to play themselves in on goal. Dale went shoulder to shoulder with one of them in the area, he flopped down and to our amazement a penalty was given. Their manager, the big centre back who is so good in the air stepped up to take it and hit it pretty much straight down the middle. I managed to get a fingertip to it which was enough to send it over. Still buzzing from that I flapped around at the resulting corner but we survived. About a minute later we were down the other end and somehow contrived to make their defender loop the ball over their keeper for our first goal. Despite Brett's strenuous claims, given the assist to Lee.
That spell totally changed the game as we barely deserved the lead but suddenly we playing proper football and the O's heads were down. Things got even better when a corner from Richard went in off the crossbar via Brett's face (apparently). The keeper had to make a good save with his leg to deny erm...somebody and both Lee, Brett and Mike G saw good chances go over the bar.
2-0 at half time and as Dave said we would be gutted if we lost this one...
A minute into the restart and we were 3-0 up. Some heart-in-mouth ball juggling by Julian just outside our area managed to result in Mike G threading a through ball to Brett who finished low into the corner. After this, things got very interesting.
With the wind against us, they were starting to dominate. They missed a golden chance from a corner when their man managed to head over the bar from a couple of yards out. They then won a free kick just outside the area when Mike G battled a little too eagerly for a ball. The free kick went in low and curled round my hand right into the corner. My position could have been better but it was a quality free kick. This got their tales up and they were pretty much all over us from that point.
Their second came from a through ball to the original scorer who struck it first time past me as I came out. There was still 15 minutes to go at this point and we were on the ropes. It's to our credit that for all their possession they didn't manage a serious shot on target for the rest of the game. There was a bit of nonsense when Richard went down after colliding with Brett and they didn't want to put the ball out (they eventually did) and it was a pretty physical game throughout but it was never ugly. Their double scorer managed to talk himself into the ref's book after a particular peculiar decision by the ref, but to be honest there were so many of them, we could all have seen yellow.
All in all a great third win on the spin and gives us some confidence that we can grind out a result.
