Sat 14 April Lane Cove West O35As v Northbridge
Twas a lovely sunny autumn afternoon for our second game of the season.
From the kick off we created quite a few chances in the opening minutes
however our intensity appeared to lack a little. The first two
substitutions of the day (Grant Cannon and Jon Prideaux) injected some
added running into the side which very pleasingly was maintained for the
whole of the rest of the match and was definitely the difference between
this performance and our lackluster 2-0 win on the first day of the season.
After a number of further chances, in a scene reminiscent of Arsenal v West
Ham a week ago, Northbridge scored from their first chance of the game,
with a well taken goal that gave stand in keeper Stuart Marshall no chance.
Cliché number one: this opened the floodgates, with the mighty coves coming
back almost immediately with Nigel Blow scoring the first of two goals
directly from a corner kick. Shortly afterwards a magnificent running
passing move saw Nigel pop up to hammer home from close range and Paul
Shelley in a fine first outing for the season added a third before half
time.
The half time talk focused on continuing to add goals and not becoming
complacent and we added a further two goals, the first a scrappy affair
that was ruled by linesman Bob "Lawrence of Arabia" Armstrong to have
crossed the goal line (goal scorer Steve Walton who gave a fine display of
a hybrid of a brickies labourer and someone from the Village People in
umpiring the Bs game) and then a brilliant move that was hammered into the
roof of the net at the far post by marauding Jon Prideaux, who has now
scored two from two games. Grant Cannon continued to threaten for the whole
of the game but did not make it on the score board this week, but scored a
cracker in his man of the match performance in round one. Northbridge
scored from the penalty spot with virtually the last kick of the game to
make the final score 5-2, but in truth that scoreline didn't even truly
reflect the strength of the team's performance.
As noted above the really pleasing aspect was the amount of running done by
all team members with Scott Rawstorne, Jon Prideaux and Grant Cannon
particularly noticeable to this reporter's eye. Dave Irvine was voted man
of the match this round, narrowly ahead of Paul Shelley and Scott
Rawstorne.
The result left us equal top with two other sides - Greenwich, who have not
lost a game for three seasons (but only beat Gordon 6-3 - the interesting
thing here is how they let Gordon score three times) and one of the West
Pymble sides.
Congrats to all on a great game.
Ivan Colhoun