Old Whitgiftian AFC

Old Whitgiftian Reserves 1-2 Credit Suisse Reserves

(Saturday, 26 January 2008)

Redley

MATCH REPORT
by Nixie

A hugely disappointing result this one. Unbeaten in the league since November, the team had started to get a lot right in their fight back into title contention. Ironically, the last team to beat us back then were this week's opponents.

This game can be easily summed up by cliches;
1) A game of two halves... one extremely poor, the other extremely unlucky.
2) In this game, you make your own luck!

In the days leading to the match the team selection had changed frequently and we were struggling to find replacements to cover the loss of skipper Chris Stafford-Hill in midfield, and Kis Kenyon and Joe Burns in defence. However, a bonus had been the shift change from Darren Redley and Dain Duncan to allow for their inclusion having earlier declared themselves unavailable.

But... Our pre-game organisation on the day itself wasn't helped by the fact that by 11.00am (the meet time) we had only 6 players and Credit Suisse were out warming up and having their team talk with more than 15 minutes to go.

1st HALF LINE-UP
HILLIER FERGUSON R - TRUMP (Cpt) - BUTLER - DENISON C DENISON J - MOORE - DUNCAN - STURDY REDLEY - PHAN

What little time we had for the pre-match team talk was spent talking about the need to go straight at CS and not give them time to settle as we had done against City of London. In our early season form, we had been notoriously poor-starters, often taking 20 minutes to get into a rythmn o play. In some games we had got away with it, but in others such as the game against Brom's we had been punished early and then spent the rest of the game fighting just to get level. This though was a particularly poor start and lasted the whole of the first half.

It was a singular problem as well... our supporting play... so many times the ball reached Darren and Vien up front, both of whom did well to hold the ball up... but they were hopelessly unsupported and were almost immediately smothered by at least 3 defenders and inevitably had the ball taken off them.

It was obvious that the team was waiting for things to happen, instead of making them happen. A couple of players wanted to do their little runs, flicks and party pieces, but not get involved in the hard work necessary either side of it... and Credit Suisse just grafted, won the 50/50s and bossed us about for the whole of the half.

Their goal came on about 15 minutes, we backed off from our own corner, they broke down their left, we didn't get close enough and having rounded our defender their forward took his goal well against Tim Hillier to make it 1-0.

View photos from this match		Photos supplied by Nixie

Tim went on to make a number of fine saves throughout the remainder of the half and along with the defence's general play managed to keep us in the game. Christian Denison was particularly up for it and had his best game by a country mile. Phil Trump, as stand-in captain used his pace and eye for the ball to great effect, and new player Dan Butler shone on his debut, especially bringing the ball out from the back.

All in all though, we were fortunate that we were only 1-0 down at the break.

2nd HALF LINE-UP
HILLIER FERGUSON R (Sub SCAFE 55) - TRUMP (Cpt) - BUTLER - DENISON C PHAN (Sub BARBER 65) - FERGUSON M - DUNCAN - STURDY REDLEY - MOORE

I explained (nicely) at half time, that the current level of performance was not acceptable and pointed out where I thought we were going wrong. A change was made to give Michael Ferguson his chance in his preferred position in Central Midfield and with Jacob Denison coming off, Vien Phan moved over to the right to continue where he had been most effective in recent weeks and Nick Moore and Darren Redley were reunited up front.

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The transformation was immediate and for the next 45 minutes or so, we battered at CS's door. Michael Ferguson relished in his role as tormentor-in-chief as he snapped at their midfielders' ankles whenever the ball came near and forced error after error out of them.

Vien now had much more freedom and after Christian moved over to the right back position, the two of them doggedly attacked down the flank, supporting each other and covering where necessary. This all allowed Dain to step up his game and he suddenly took his playmaker role up a couple of notches. Richard Sturdy started to receive the ball in wider areas and was able to run at his marker more, and came infield to look for it when the service wasn't there.

Nick and Darren looked much more settled and chances became more frequent. CS defended doggedly, but their clearances became more desperate and the pressure intensified. I think the best words that I can use here are "hunger" and "determination" and whenever we ave these elements together, we can be a very effective team.

The breakthrough came 10 minutes into the half when Richard Sturdy, Nick Moore and Darren Redley joined forces in the build up, before Darren went a fine solo run and finish, beating the keeper with a low shot across the goal. 1-1.

CS were now rattled and stopped doing the things they did very well in the first half. Their defence stayed extremely solid, but it is fair to say we now controlled their midfield and forward lines, the latter of which stopped chasing the balls that had caused us so much trouble in the first half.

However, whereas a draw may have been acceptable to CS, it was not an option for us and we needed to keep pressing for the winner. The rest of the game was just that, but CS were solid and threw themselves at everything and their keeper rescued them on a number of occasions. We were also guilty of missing a couple of sitters where it probably would have been easier to score than miss.

This constant attack cost us in the end, when with about 5 minutes to go, we failed to provide cover at the far post for a speculative CS cross from our right. The defence ended up marking each other and the ball fell to the CS forward to sidefoot it in from close range for his brace.

The whistle blew soon after and CS celebrated as if they'd won a cup final... and in truth they performed well when a lot of other teams would have buckled. One of their players told me that they'd probably used up all their luck in this one game... but my reply was that they had simply taken their chances and we hadn't.

You make your own luck in this game!

MAN OF THE MATCH RESULT
Congratulations to DAIN DUNCAN for winning the man-of-the-match in this game. Its getting a bit repetitive to say this, but once again our midfield powerhouse put in a real team performance and used his fitness and energy to grea effect. This is the second m-o-t-m award of three matches this month for Darren. Phil Trump can in second to make it a total of 27 votes from 3 matches, with another fine central defensive display.

Pos	Player	Ref	1st	2nd	Total
1st	DAIN DUNCAN	1	7	3	18
2nd	Philip Trump	-	4	4	12
3rd	Christian Denison	-	2	2	6
4th	Darren Redley	-	1	2	4
5th	Tim Hillier	-	1	1	3
6th=	Michael Ferguson	-	-	1	1
6th=	Vien Phan	-	-	1	1

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