16th June 2007 - Round 9: Scotch vs Sacred Heart

A1: Scotch 2 - 3 Sacred Heart B1: Scotch 2 - 6 Sacred Heart A1 SUMMARY Another dissapointing day result wise for the Scotch boys who just can't take a trick at the moment, as I feel we definitely deserved more from the game. We made a couple of line-up changes today with Stig and Havar beginning in the back four, and Mitris and Dannyboy starting up front to try and exploit Sacred Hearts lack of pace at the back. Dietmar returned back in goals for us, and Eirik was missing due to uni exam commitments. Things got off to a great start when with only 5 minutes gone, a through ball played by birthday-boi Johnny found Mitris at the top of the box, who then bravely slid in to knock the ball past the keeper as he was charging out. Nice goal mate! 1-0! With a start like that we then should have consolidated and controlled the game, however about 10 minutes later we went to sleep three times inside our defensive box and allowed easy balls to be played in from the left (Paps' fault!!) and conceded 3 goals in 10 minutes, 2 from headers and one from a tame shot that wasn't closed down from the penalty spot. 3-1 down just like that! Our formation obviously wasn't working so we needed to make some changes for the second half. Dan went back into defence as we needed a little more pace at the back to help cover, and Paul and Jordan were bought on to play as a double centre-forward pairing, that I thought worked well. It will be very good when they're both 100% fit. All in all we played the better soccer in the second half, and had several good shooting chances, especially from around the box, but struggled to make the keeper work. Our goal came about 20 minutes into the second half, when a great cross from Fabs found captain John at the back post who headed strongly past the keepers feet from half a yard!! (it was probably several yards but we can't give Johnny a big head!) The birthday boy scores and we were back in it. 3-2. Unfortunately the score stayed that way but we had the majority of the attacking play for the final 30 minutes. Geordie and Mitris played very well all day out wide and wereboth dangerous putting balls in and running at players. We look so much better when we use these two guys quickly and get balls into the box. Johnny marshalled the midfield well all day and had a series of great free kicks from distance we unfortunately couldn't get on the end of. In the end we again are still improving weekly, and our posession and attacking play and confidence is certainly on the up very quickly. it is still our inability to keep clean sheets and defend strongly and hold our formation when we need to that is our downfall. Still plenty of time to work on that though!! Thanks again to those that came out to watch on not the warmest day ever, and on an afternoon that seemed like we needed some lights on the pitch! We will start getting some wins on the board!! 3 votes: Brendan Connelly 2 votes: Nick Mitris 1 vote: John McQueen B1 SUMMARY What do we need to do to get a win!?!? Well, maybe not concede as many goals for a start!! :o) haha The first half was quite a good performance really, with Dayne making his return after breaking some ribs several weeks ago! Our first goal came from Will who went for a long range shot (or cross?? we'll say a shot!!) that was deflected into the back of the net from a Sacred Heart defender. This was in a 25 minute period of the first half where Scotch had nearly all possession and should have made it count on the score board a little more. In the second half, similar to the A's match, there was a 20minute period where the defensive concentration was lost and Sacred Heart put several past us a little too easily. Andy Pandy tried to restore some fight with a good shot from about 15 yards out theat went into the top right corner. This was definitely one of the games we really thought we could win, but it unfortunately didn't turn out that way. A big positive is that we scored a couple times in a match. 3 votes: Dayne McClure-Thomas 2 votes: Will Rogers 1 vote: Harald