On Saturday the Quiche played Ellerslie Jackson, a side which until recently had topped the table.
The visitors proved to be a well-organised, physical side playing a similar close-passing style to the Quiche. This led to an exciting, entertaining game for the large crowd which had poured through the gates prior to kick-off.
Although the early exchanges were fairly even, the Quiche soon upped the pace and created several chances, with no positive result. Ellerslie, though, were always looking dangerous and in fact scored first, against the run of play, with a well-struck drive into the corner of the net.
The Quiche heads stayed up, however, and they continued to build pressure. Eventually a searching through ball from MP was volleyed sweetly home by Tom to level the scores.
Early in the second half Big Ben embarked on one of his runs, and instead of deploying his usual tactic of falling over at the end of it, he managed a pass to MP, who produced an inch-perfect lob over the rapidly-advancing keeper.
At this, the visitors upped their game, and in turn pressurised the Quiche defence, although some of the physical measures they used were questionable to say the least. The Quiche defence, as it has done on several occasions,stood firm. Jono utilised every inch of his arms and legs on the right, and Alex made a series of crunching tackles on the left, using a varying mixture of skill and ferocity - so much so that spectators were forced to move back from the touchline for fear of being hit by an Ellerslie arm or leg which had parted company with its body.
Midway through the half, Neil was briefly called away on business, and this provided the watching fashion aficionados with another long-awaited glimpse of Ryan's world-famous flapping anorak in goal. Needless to say, he kept an immaculate clean sheet for some 10 minutes.
Upon his return, Neil produced a world-class save from point-blank range to keep the Quiche in the lead, and was in position also to thwart several other threatening attacks.
During this spell, Big Ben chose to delight the crowd with his newly-developed speciality, whereby he confuses opponents by kneeling down on all fours to head the ball clear.
Despite several hearts-in-mouth moments, the score remained at 2-1, giving the Quiche an important victory over one of the stronger teams in the Division.
At the midway point in the season, then, the Quiche are handily placed in 4th position, only 2 points behind the 2nd placed team.
Man of the match was Alex, who once again obliterated any threat down the left.
Aside from Ryan's previously mentioned anorak, it was noted that Phil has taken to wearing his mother's fetching beanie hat, and with Duncan's trousers never far from the limelight, the Quiche will clearly walk away with the AFF Fashion Trophy for 2014.
Next weeks game ( at Colin Maiden Park with a 2-45 ko) is the return fixture against Ellerslie Hicks, who beat us 2-1 in the first game of the season. Revenge is sweet !
Go the Quiche !!!
