Lane Cove West 4, Chatswood Rangers 1

26 May 2008, Blackman Oval

Sunny Blackman was the scene once again. As the months are moving by its starting to resemble a Pre Natal class with the number of bumps on show. Is this an advantage..........not if you want to play football. The upside is that the grass is still there. The colour has a jaundice look about it however.

So we kicked off. Boom, crash, wallop.........1-0..........another good start. Felix with a simple tap in from the keepers save. All as result of some quick ball movement down the left and good ball in and a shot. Only if the entire game was played in the first 15minutes we would be hard to stop.

4 minutes later poor clearance by their keeper, falls in the region of Horse loitering out of position outside the area. Puts out a foot in what seems to be an action better associated with self preservation rather than clinical finishing.........but alas it was a clinical lob over the stranded keeper for 2-0.

3 minutes later they had a corner and it true organised chaos, our small guys were marking their tall timber at the back post. Murphy’s law naturally delivered with a lovely ball to the back post. They finish nicely at the back post and its game on. Certainly against the run of play.

So we’re now 10 minutes in and its 2-1 our way...............bringing the crowds back........... Or do people just come to Blackman for the facilities available?

5 minutes later a ball hits the hand of our defender. Hand ball was the cry from Rangers. The ref dismissed it with a loud authoritative “play on”, however. It wasn’t intentional..............putting the ‘O’ into controversy.

The game became a good old fashioned slug fest. 2 old pugs trading arm shots. Ugly long stuff, till about the 35^th minute when Peter Xenos turned on a piece of magic. Brings the ball down 3 meters in from the junction of the halfway and the touch line in the opposition half. Plenty of room to move. Beats his first and second man 10 yards outside the box, glides past another at the top of the box cuts inside his man in the box and smashes it with his dodgy left into the roof of the night. 3-1 and some breathing space.

The game continued with poor play from both. Rangers were their whingeing best. They must have the same mental cleansing throughout the club, every age group seems to carry on with the same crap. Something’s don’t change.

Halftime came and we could take stock for the second half.

To be fair they started the second half a lot better and created numerous chances. Paddles was on today however and he made 3 fine saves. One a point blank save. Fantastic.

We tightened up with some positional changes and that stopped the opportunities and at the 30^th minute in the second half a wonderful ball was laid on for Felix to get in behind the defence and with a precision finish make it 4-1.

To be fair the second half was marred with complaints and a dirty off the ball elbow by Rangers. Unfortunately the football wasn’t good enough from either team to overcome the rubbish in the second half.

In the end we got another win. The only sour point was what seemed to be a serious injury to Rich Beattie’s ankle. They don’t make them like they use to!!!