Marist 5-2 BNU Thirds - All wrong at Cobham
Mmm – consistency is usually considered a good thing, but 2 consecutive matches conceding 5 goals is possibly not ideal. This, in stark contrast to last week, was a defeat brought almost entirely upon ourselves. It all started with an unlucky deflection from our emergency stand-in keeper, the ball coming off Mick and then the post to land right in front of the striker who couldn’t miss. A penalty conceded 5 mins later (one of many decisions that didn’t go our way from a typically pedantic referee) saw us 2-0 down early doors.
Without our regular keeper we were always likely to struggle, but having said that Mick did an excellent job filling in between the sticks, and the performance would have been faultless, for it not being the fact that nobody had informed him of certain rule changes since the 1970’s! Upon catching the ball from a dangerous cross, he preceded to drop the ball…have a little dribble in the box, and then pick the ball up again when their striker closed him down…ooops! Marist made the most of the indirect free kick, finding the net, despite BNU ‘parking the bus’ on the goal line. This goal to put them 3-2 up had a slightly deflating effect as we had just levelled at 2-2 and we were once again chasing the game.
Up until then the omens for a comeback were looking good, BNU completely dominated the majority of the first half (Phil grabbing his first of the season), and when Brent levelled in spectacular circumstances (..he promises it was a shot and not a cross, but either way the ball ended up in the net! ) the game was on again.
However even at 3-2 down we had chances, particularly myself glancing a free header just wide and following up the trick with a woeful goal kick (showing Mick how it’s shouldn’t be done) which came straight back to the striker who made no mistake from a tight angle. 4-2 and the game was up, although Marist still found time to get a fifth and somehow we had conceded 5 again despite playing pretty well in patches.
Nigel Moore