Scorer: Wellman
Another disappointing result for the 4s this week following a 4-1 home loss, after extra time, to Wood Green Old Boys in the AFA Cup. The game followed a similar pattern to our last two defeats where we had the majority of possession which we failed to capitalise on with things once again just not falling our way.
We started off attacking down Pitch #2 and it took us a good 20 mins to get going. Wood Green were defending deep and had two quick strikers who gave us some early problems on the counter attack. Just as we had started to impose ourselves we made things difficult for ourselves when a free kick to the left of our box was played back to Mittermaier in goal which the opposition striker read well intercepting Tobi’s clearance and played a simple ball to the edge of six yard box for his strike partner to tap in. We didn’t let this get to us and we continued pressing with Fox and Gregory finding space down the flanks to put in some good crosses with which we came close on a couple of occasions. We equalised with about 5 mins to go in the half after some good build up play with the ball breaking to Wellman who knocked it in home from 10 yards out. 1-1 at halftime.
From the restart it was all AP. Jones, Fortucci and Lagos were dominating the middle of the park and we were still finding lots of space down the wings. Wellman created a good chance for himself after taking on a couple of defenders but couldn’t get enough of an angle of his shot, Gatenby hit the post and Byrne-Nelson and Jones also went close. As the half went on Wood Green started to break up play with lots of niggly fouls, with Jones in particular coming in for some special attention, which they quickly followed up with some textbook “getting on the refs back” and calling for AP players to be booked for daring to challenge for the ball. We carried on having the majority of the play with Lagos coming the closest to a winner by repeating his trick from a couple of weeks ago with another pile driver off the crossbar but we couldn’t find a way through and the game went to extra time.
The first half of extra time carried on much as the second half with AP having most of the play but still unable to get a goal, the closest being a chance cleared off the line. As the second half of extra time started the feeling was that if either side managed to score the game was theirs. It didn’t take long for this to come true as the Wood Green striker pounced on header back to Tobi to make it 2-1. This left us, for those accustomed to Pitch #2 know, with a mountain to climb and as we chased an equaliser Wood Green capitalised and hit us a couple of times on the counter to give the final score a bit of lustre.
Squad: Mittermaier, McGlogan, Johnson, Gregory, Fox, Lagos, Fortucci, Jones, Wellman, Gatenby, Forbes. Subs: Gauci, Byrne-Nelson, Long.
MoM: Fortucci
