Thrapston Town Yellow 1 v Weekley Rovers Roma 5
Due to a combination of illness, injury and delayed flights we were down to a magnificent 7 today. (With my rapidly receding hairline there is an obvious joke in there about me being Yul Brynner)!
For those who remember the film you will recall that it about a group of men hired to protect a town from the constant raids of a bunch of outlaws. Slowly they and the people of the town learn to work together, defend themselves, stand up to the enemy and turn defence into attack.
Today the boys displayed these qualities – working hard together, defending and attacking. I believe today we were missing one vital element displayed by the people of that town – the confidence and belief in ourselves.
The start of the game was a very even contest with both teams creating chances to score. Both defences held out well. Weekly then scored two goals in quick succession – both goals being poked home from short range. Going up the slope and into the wind the boys kept going and created further chances. With 15 minutes gone one of those attacks turned into a goal. We have worked hard on our passing and movement in training and it was an excellent move with most of the team involved before Elliot slotted the ball in the net. Unfortunately for the Yellows Weekly managed a third goal before the half time interval.
It was a shame that we’d conceded three goals before half time because in truth that gave us too much to do in the second to turn the game around. Despite our excellent defending and creating further chances Roma used their numerical advantage to bring on ‘fresh legs’ in the second half and scored a further two goals.
Weekly are a good team who are well Managed. However, I really believe that our boys are every bit as good as they are. We have never had a match when the effort and commitment was not there. Today was no exception – they really tried hard and played well with the ball. The difference today was when they didn’t have the ball they seemed to lack a little confidence and belief throughout the team in their ability to win it back. The strange thing was that we’d worked on ‘tackling’, ‘marking’ and ‘closing down’ in training yesterday when the boys had been great. This just needed bringing to the match. We should always respect the opposition but not at the expense of giving them too much time on the ball. HASTLE, HASTLE, HASTLE should be our motto.
Boys – I really meant what I said at the end of the match. You played well. Today was a missed opportunity to get something out of the game. Next time don’t give our season ticket holders any opportunity in the future to shout ‘mark them’, ‘tackle’ and ‘first to the ball’ be there first – have that confidence and belief I mention to know that you go into every tackle and win that ball.
|
