Winchmore Hill 7’s vs St. James old boys Reserves won 2-1 league.
Had a strong squad today with a lot of players coming back from illness and injury, I had to admit I felt good about this game. But unfortunately to start with our ref hadn’t turned up or even inform anyone about not coming so up step Roshane and had done a great job with some amusing moments also. But back to the game then.
So playing 3-5-2 we all felt confident in what to do but we started very slowly out the blocks and we had gone 1-0 down via a corner and poor defending and communication on our half for them to take the lead. And for some reason we felt sorry for ourselves, the fact it was so early meant we had so much time to get back in the game and just had to politely remind everyone of that.
1st half was a bit uneventful from us but credit to the opposition that was down to them keeping it like that. Just waiting for half time to come and get the team together and make a few changes and remind them to compete for the ball and not hope and leave it for the next player to take care of and take responsibility and change the result.
2nd half was all us, dominating from beginning to end and our first goal came via a beautiful assist through from our midfield James Cheetham to our Dutch superstar on loan Jeroen Van Putten and he had tucked it into the bottom right corner of the keeper. Great move, pass, run and goal. 1-1 and our tails were up.
Then the 2nd goal was just creeping round the corner, with cooper giving his best for 60 minutes trying to beat down the wall of St. James, Muñoz had came on to replace him. And an instant impact he wins a penalty and decided to take it. Being really confident on penalties he had decided to put it into the top right corner for it only to hit the underside of the bar bounce out in front of the line.. No Goal WTF that is our 4th penalty miss this season as a team.
With that happening St. James knew they were lucky and felt they could get back into the game and fair play to them they tried In a way they could. Then the game changer. Troy Tizard-Cleghorn fantastic young player with a fantastic right hand, reacts to being kicked by another youngster while off the pitch. By knocking him flat out on his back with one punch.
As much as I like a fight, I only like a fight for the right reason and being kicked during a football game isn’t one. It’s a compliment I was always taught because they can’t handle you. So to react like that was unacceptable and definitely wrong time, wrong place and fighting is all about timing. Football is about patience and staying calm.
With less then 5 minutes on the clock St. James threatened to walk off the pitch and not carry on. So all that hard work would of been for nothing and we nearly lost the points altogether because of petulance and that would of been really unfortunate for the team due to the hard work.
Then the ref made the right call to send off Troy but to keep the peace he left their player on even though he should of got a red card for what he did also, but in all fairness he got knocked out so that was enough for him. Then from the drop they nearly scored down to 10 men 4 minutes left that was not what I was feeling in the week.
Playing up top on his own for the last few minutes Muñoz just kept hustling the defenders, putting them under pressure and being patient. Then our other Dutch loanee Tim Nagtegaal played a lovely long diagonal ball between the two CB’s Muñoz on his bike chasing it down and that’s when it happened. They panicked.
The defender and goal keeper more focused on the attacker running at them and the touch back was short and wide for Muñoz to run round the keeper and collect the ball and slot it in with the left to make it 2-1 with 30 seconds left.
Due to what happened earlier I would of been going crazy scoring at that time but instead had gone to the keeper and apologised to him because of the whole situation with the red card and the fact he was brilliant that day. But justice was done.
Without a doubt we deserved the 3 points on the day it was just unfortunate it happened the way it did. Fair play to the opponents though making it hard for us.Â
Man of the match would have to be Mr Van Putten for his work ethic and goal on the day.