The draw could have been a little kinder but I suppose you have to play the big dogs some time.  BNU lined up with a new management team and several new faces.  Barrie Truman and John Pearce had taken over the reins with Sandy now looking after the reserves.  John and Barrie had promoted several reserve players into the first team due to player losses from last year and the odd holiday maker away for Easter.   Petone were also somewhat changed from last year but are still one of the favourites for the title after taking out the Hilton Petone preseason tournament.

Petone Rec had put on a cracking day for football, very calm, plenty of sun, a good flat pitch and a decent sized, 99% Petone supporters, crowd. 

For this year’s match reports I’ve decided to liken each game to a movie.  Its going to be a stretch at times, and this is one of those times.

This match reminded me of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”.  Obviously there is the Easter connection with this match being played on Easter Saturday.  Holy Saturday is the day Jesus rested in the grave and BNU began digging their own grave about 15 minutes in.  Brooklyn had two chances to clear their lines from a well worked Petone attack but failed leading to Conor Graham scoring what will surely be the own goal of the season.  It wasn’t so much the finish from five yards, or the fact there wasn’t a Petone player within 15 yards, more the half pike, full double axle with supine split that he performed in the lead up to this sublime strike.

It was an unfortunate way to go behind as up to this point BNU had been channelling their passion reasonably constructively without really putting too much pressure on Petone’s back line.  This setback caused the odd BNU head to go down which helped Petone’s more experienced and settled line-up gain the ascendency. 

Petone goals followed reasonably regularly from this point.  Brooklyn were struggling to put too much together in an attacking sense in the first half but some juggling of resources at the break did see a couple of worthwhile efforts on the Petone goal.  Unfortunately these amounted to nothing and this crucifixion ended at 5 nil to the home side. 

Not a great start to the season but there were enough glimpses of potential to not get too despondent regards the season to come.  And the team didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity to make some head way up the table with the next match being against Wharfies on Easter Monday.