Post by oggy on Nov 13, 2011 18:45:07 GMT
Vets squad was tested to its limits today when we travelled to HSBC in beckenham with so many injured/unavailable players we somehow scraped together a team of fit/semi fit players,once again we started slowly and gave away a needless sloppy goal when a easy pass back to roland in goal would of suficed instead of trying to dribble round their forward losing possession who duelly scored so 1-0 after 5 mins then simon young had come off due to recurring hamstring problem to be replaced by jermaine (mate from work) helping us who showed early promise up front linking the play and shooting on target but not troubling keeper,then worse was to happen shortly when former player of year and left back paul walker challenged for a header to land awkwardly and collapse to ground in agony clutching his knee,he was carried off in pain likely outcome ruptured cruciate and was taken to hospital after a lengthy wait being helped by dave murphy who himself has had cruciate operation recently so on came caffell with calf injury to make eleven if not much else,we had to shuffle the positions around but managed to play the ball around well with reynolds,woods & monk working tirelessy in midfield and should of equalised when blomeley pulled the ball back to caffell who from 15 yds in front of goal managed to hit the roof of building behind the goal and cant even blame a bobble as pitch was flat and immaculate,then a sucker punch goal seconds before half time giving hsbc a 2-0 h/t lead, second half we took a time to settle into our play before gradually taking control of the game and creating numerous chances first john woods broke through one on one with keeper but keeper stood up well to block the shot then jermaine beat the offside trap to again miss a great chance when slotting just wide with only keeper to beat so against all the odds we should have been level if not winning by now,the defence of ennis, butcher and higgy performed very well against a couple a fast tricky forwards and we even looked the stronger side dominating the game pushing for a goal when reynolds,miinihane and caffell all missed chances to score some down to good defensive blocking some wastefull finishing or in my case just a waste of time being on the pitch to say everything i tried didnt come off was understatement,but after pushing men forward we were allways open to counter attack and after one very good save from roland they finnally finished us off scoring again to make final score 3-0,even so was proud of the team for showing guts and passion and playing really good football against the odds even oppo said it was never a 3-0 game but when you have two strikers in murphy/young watching on sidelines with near 400 club goals between them we just lacked that golden touch in front of goal,that said its allways a good well contested game against HSBC which both teams enjoy playing,footnote my ruts player of match today although everyone gave their all was justedged today by higgy espiecially after a couple of dodgy performances of late.