On a lovely sunny morning, yet another “new look” Ship squad assembled at Riverside Lands, for a winnable game against London Eagles. With Pete taken down by a nasty bug and Luke once again taken down by 15 pints of strong lager, The Ship could only muster one sub, but had a team that looked strong on paper.
With Jamie R making his second coming and his friend Tom joining him in Midfield The Ship started far the better and were knocking the ball around in some style. I’d go as far to say, it was some of the best football we have played in years and the goal was only a matter of time,with Chris G’s tireless running and corner after corner, forcing problems for the Eagles.
Indeed the goal did come, but it was a punt over the top of our defence and a cool finish from the Eagles striker that put them 1.0 up, totallyagainst the run of play. Back we came though and continued where we left off, running the game and looking like the equalizer was when, not if.
It didn’t come though and a quite amazing finish from the same striker, put the Eagles 2.0 up.
Now The Ship started to look a bit frail. In the 15 minutes before half time we really had to dig in to prevent a third and get through to what was bound to be a slaughtering half time team talk from manager Smith. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe it was that he hadn’t drunk since Wednesday evening, but the team talk was positive and talked of flowing football, offside traps and every chance of getting somethingfrom the game.
The second half was by no means one way traffic, but The Ship were definitely on top and as D Boland slotted home a blatant pen, The Ship looked on course to snatch at least a point.
We had our chances, but sadly time ran out and The Ship finished a very entertaining encounter without any points.
