After several great years with the club we say goodbye (temporarily hopefully) to Tom Rochester (TRoc) who is off to Uni now, although his terms seem to be only about 6 weeks long, so hopefully see him back every now and again. So thank you to all you have giving to the club over the years. So it was great that he not only could play the 4s game (where it all started) but could play one last game with his Dad for his farewell. Hopefully we could make it a good one.
A slightly delayed start (awaiting Ely’s 11th player) and in the sunshine (unfortunately Ely decided to wear their dark green strip rather than their white, which proved a little difficult with our dark blue) the game got under way. We started well and seemed to be avoiding the sloppy mis-passes from last week, although couldn’t get a breakthrough. Finally on 19mins, a great through ball from Martin, an horrendous first touch by me which took the ball up into the air on my reverse side, somehow with back to goal I managed to reverse stick volley it into the goal (trust me 999 out of 1000 I would have missed the ball completely, let alone beat the keeper). 1:0 at half time. And yes will be dining out on that for a while.
The second half saw some great defensive work and battling midfield kept the score the same, until on 51mins Kettering scored again – this time a reversion back to type saw a scrapy goal from me from about 1.5m out after a bit of a goal scramble with Doug slipping the ball to me in front of goal.
Ely came back strong and a counter attack saw us beaten by a back post poacher yet again to the fury of Mike. Mike then had to make a good save, and we were wondering whether it was going to be one of the those tense back to the wall finishes. Justin then hobbled off. John was getting more a more frustrated in midfield – should take a leaf out of your son’s book and play with calm and composure (we will miss you TRoc)!
So when in trouble remember to leave it to the youngsters, Bruno driving at the defence at the top of the D, should have slipped it left to an open Ed W, but he obviously had a better plan, i.e. continue to drive, drag more defenders in, then like a snooker player using the cushion for angles, use the defender to deflect his shot perfectly to Ed W – it worked to perfection. Ed W received the ball in space and then smacked it past the keeper. (I must confess for a split second I contemplated doing a Shaun, and tapping the ball over the line for my hat-trick – but didn’t want to deny Ed his own hat-trick – scoring for the 3 game on the bounce which is no small feat - or probably more that I didn’t want to pay for the Jug back at the clubhouse!)
That seemed to knock the fight out of Ely and we saw out the last few minutes. So final score 3:1, and another 3 points towards our goal of staying up.
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Captain’s thoughts – Team Selection - Gets harder every week, particularly when those who step in do so well. Captain’s team selection is never easy, juggling players availability, team dynamics, formations requirement, players dropping down, players expectations, losing player up a team. So we thank you for your patience and understanding.
Player of the Match – Me ––Not sure why, as plenty of outstanding performances but I’ll take it. (probably the threat of not being picked next week secured some votes!)
D0D Dani and Ben S – completely unsociable at the club house and glued to the pool table.
Champagne moment – One of the youngsters coming up to me after my reverse volley goal and stating “never seen you do anything good like that before” I think it was a compliment of sorts!
Captain’s mention – Nice to see so many player from our other teams supporting for the side lines, really does give those playing a boost.