Monday, 14 May 2012

Winter League Game Week #4 - vs Pinelands (Mens 2s)


Opponents: Pinelands B
Venue: Hartlyvale
Date: 12 May 2012

Coming from a win the previous week the 2s were feeling confident about picking up our second win of the season. This game saw Milky make a comeback, our fourth different keeper for the season and we gladly accepted his wealth of experience. We had a feeling that this would be a relatively easy game, but oh were we mistaken.

The game started rather evenly with both sides playing some good hockey. The first heart in mouth moment came when a Pinelands player found space in the D to angle a front stick deflection that beat Milky all ends up but hit the underside of the crossbar and somehow didn’t go in. Mutuals reply was to win a short corner and for some reason we let the Raff have a drag which payed dividends as he slotted it bottom left. 1 – 0 to Mutual and yet another solid start.

However our defense was struggling. With Pinelands pressing high and lack of movement from our link line there was enormous pressure on Boogs and Pinelands seemed to take control of the game as we struggled to move the ball out of our half. Add some poor marking into the mix as well as an overhead attempt from the Raff that wouldn’t have even cleared Basticks head and Pinelands eventually grabbed a soft equaliser after a rebound from a good save from Milky and us failing to clear the loose ball was backsticked into the roof of the net. 1 – 1 is how the half ended.

After a kak out session by Bollie (Sparky with yet another coach fail, notes have been taken and he will be on DEATH at the next fines) at half time regading our poor defensive efforts we immediately started playing better hockey and started to dictate play and take the danger out of Pinelands attacks. We took the lead again through Vis who passed it into the goals to give us a 2 – 1 lead (he is very persistent with his new ‘shooting’ technique). However Pinelands replied with an equaliser shortly after. At this point we realised we were gonna have to work hard for the win.

Both teams were attacking frantically with our devastating pace upfront causing serious issues for the Pinelands defense, but we just couldn’t seem to find the back of the net with their keeper making several great saves. Defensively, Mutual looked like a new side with much better communication from Milky to the backs and from the backs to the links. We were making it very difficult for Pinelands to get into our D.

10 minutes from time and Patches intercepted a Pinelands 16 and he laid a ball for Vis in the D who mistrapped the pass and as a result deflected it goalwards which the keeper saved and somehow landed on the floor and the ball bounced back to Vis who slotted into open goals #CoolAsACucumber #CouldNotBelieveHisLuck. So compliments of the luckiest goal I have seen in my life (besides Laurent Koscielny’s goal against West Brom) we had a 3 – 2 lead.

Thus began 10 minutes of intense hockey for both sides. Pinelands threw everything forward and Mutual looked to counter to put the game out of reach. Mutual defended with some great heart to keep out a desperate Pinelands side and very nearly added a fourth goal on a few occasions but it ended 3 – 2 to the Mutual 2s.

A much stronger second half performance and some HUGE heart saw the 2s pick up a hard earned victory which saw us move into 6th place on the log (however there were 4 other games still to be played this weekend). Very proud of the lads for upping our game.

Result: Mutual 3 – Pinelands B 2

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Deny

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