Goals – Hubbard, Wilding
A return to winning ways for the Reserves with a victory in which the score line did not match our domination of the tie – indeed we were behind for the majority of the game. A couple of late cry-offs left us struggling, so thanks to Jimmy who allowed Sly to return to the Reserves from the 4’s.
Despite arriving in good time (despite Macca getting us lost), we started sluggishly and found ourselves 1 down with 15 minutes – miscommunication across the backline allowed a speculative shot to take a looping deflection off Simmo and creep past Jason in goal.
Dusting ourselves down, we set about playing our football. Weirside’s midfield gave us acres and we popped the ball about, but the final ball was lacking, or our choice of pass was lacking. Despite having a massive amount of possession, we only really tested the Weirside Keeper on a couple of occasions.
At half time the Gaffer let us know that he was not happy with our passing and our application and with this ringing in our ears we took the field with renewed gusto. Bruce’s knee had seized up at this point so Sly came into the midfield and Les was pushed up to support Mike. We moved the ball about excellently and there were long passages of play where the opposition did not get the ball. Still we were not able to score – the ball was not falling for us in the box, and there was some heroic defending going on by the home side.
However, with 20 or so minutes to go we equalized when a beautiful freekick by Mike found the top corner from 20 yards. From this point we smelled blood and pressed on a Weirside, who despite looking to close down the game looked dangerous on the break. The ball was fizzed across the box several times, and the Skipper was playing virtually as a striker as we penned the oppo in.
We got the goal and the win when a prolonged period of pressure saw Danny Wilding delicately lob over the penalty box containing about 18 players to find the top corner. A beauty of a goal worth winning any game.
We then went on to do our usual trick of silly passes that gave away possession cheaply. We really need to learn how to close a game out safely.
So all in all we did enough. The score line does not tell the story of the game, but I know that the oppo may feel slightly aggrieved having led for so long and defended so well.
Man of the Match – Les Manu – the driving force of the team, and was near unplayable.
Team – Smith, Fabb, McLoughlin, Simpson, Wilding, Manu, Hancock, Hillier (Kadua), Kenga, McMeekin (Cornibert), Hubbard.
