Lane Cove West 1,
Northbridge B 2
A disappointing end to the season. We played some of our
best football in the first half, and were winning. But we struggled in the
second half, and ended up with nothing.
Koola was wonderfully muddy and puddly:
the sort of pitch you get in
In
the first half we always seemed dominant, but our best period – the best of the
season, perhaps – came after we went one up. James had chased a through ball
and planted it past the keeper: 1-0.
Then
we seemed to pass the ball around at will, avoiding the mud, and creating lots
of chances. Howard looked likely several times to open his scoring account for
Lane Cove West (with a large sample of his fan club in attendance), but
couldn’t quite complete. Scott was also running free, and we were overrunning
Northbridge in everything but the score.
Then
something bad happened: the ref blew his whistle for half-time. We didn’t just
change ends: we changed fortunes, too. Suddenly it was Northbridge who were the
more fluent. Despite our agreement to play away from the biggest puddle, we
seemed to make a bee-line for it, and rediscovered that you can’t play nice
dainty football in a bog.
Meantime
Northbridge were enjoying attacking the drier end, and, as last week, we
conceded a goal shortly after reshuffling our back line. This time it was the
big sturdy forward who forced his way through the defence
before curling the ball stylishly around Tony: 1-1.
And
not too much later, we were behind. From a corner, I think it was. The ball was
headed, at short range, hard at Tony. He did well to stop it but couldn’t hold
on. Lionel was in just the right place to take advantage, and it was 1-2.
We
battled on, but had many fewer chances in the second half. Jon was now freed
from his defensive role and marauded in mid-field and up front. One of his
spectacular runs past several defenders ended in a clash worthy of water-polo:
free-kick against was the slightly harsh decision. (By the way, I had an email
from Northbridge after the game: friendly, but mentioning that the author had a
cracked rib, courtesy of a “late tackle”. Who wants to own up? Mike Fraser, his
name is, if it helps).
Tony
continued his heroics of recent weeks, in very difficult conditions, and again
it was a good all-round performance that wasn’t quite enough.
So
we trudged off, happy enough with our first O45 season, overall. We had some
good wins, and were competitive in most of our games. But after winning six and
drawing one of the first nine, we won only once more in the second half of the
season, and got just one point from our last six games. So some strengthening
for next year would be good: maybe even to form two teams. So get out there
recruiting!
Thanks
to Peter & Steve B for being linesmen at 1pm; and to Peter for organizing
our ground-dressing employee all season; to Ernie for the 321s (suspended for
this week), Howard for his captaincy; martin for doing the club’s finances, and
everyone for good team spirit and lots of fun. With O45s now in full swing,
we’ve all got at least another 20 years in us!
MARK
BRYANT