Match Report

Opposition: Commercial

Date: 1-May-2003

Time: 7:50

Late in the afternoon I received a call from Neil saying that he was feeling ill (having transitted through Singapore) he thought it best if he didn't play but might turn up. Down to 10 and then Wayne tells me that Terry can play – back to 11 and all the time I had forgotten about Andrew Blanchard (12) and the borrowed keeper (Andrew for Strikers – thanks again Andrew). Two Reserves!!!!!!

Non Starters:-

Ian Wells- Broken Finger – legacy of yellow card offence Versus Toowoomba on Sunday – titch titch and all that pain pulling up ones underdaks and socks etc too.

Bruce Clarris – sore good knee and a headache

Colin Murphy – finally gone to Belgium!!!!! (last time he travelled he went to New York and we all know what happened then don't we) – Hope there's no hi-rise in Antwerp.

1st half.

Two subs and a goal keeper to boot (so to speak). The team sorted it's self out in the normal manner – those that couldn't fit on the bench had to play. John and Steve sat our to begin with as they'd both played an earlier game – where Steve scored the goal that allowed us to creep past Strikers into 3^rd spot. Steve went on to play the game after us too and then played Golf on Thursday – he reports that he was little tired when he got to the 14^th.

Game started quickly and I immediately set the pattern for me for the night – missing an easy goal (memo – keep stick on the gound you dickhead). Steve put a shot over the net, Darryl and Andrew put them into the net and we were up 2-0. Our fullback, Craig who spent all of 30 seconds in that spot was often seen between Terry and myself on the rightside and on occassions Greg and Andrew (GK) were the only two in our half. We completely dominated possession but still managed to hit long at the wrong moments – not too many one-twos and poor finishing (I went on to miss three easy shots). Our dominance was aided by Commercials complete inability to keep the ball under control – they often turned it over by hitting it straight to us from frees. They missed Peter Cummin in the centre and Col Morley was simply outgunned by Wayne all night. Col (commercial) must have run kilometres more than anyone else and hardly touched the ball – good thing he's just a young bloke.

So, halftime, 2 up.

2^nd Half

Bearing in mind our 2-8 loss to strikers when we were 2 up kept everything under control at half-time. Mainly discussion about our long hitting in the forwards and poor use of passing opportunities. Craig may have wished he passed just a little more later in this half when he was hacked and his new 39” stick had a large notch added as a feature half way up the shaft. Actually Craig, Darryl, Wayne and Terry had fine games and their extra punch is making us look fairly handy upfront.

This half went along in a fairly predictable manner – by this time our structure was not so good and we often had too many forwards but options continued to come. Barry took over from me in the 2^nd half and managed to blow some opportunities too. In fact all the forwards and the non-forward forwards managed to screw up a goal or two.

With the centre completely dominated by Wayne and the ball coming down the wings we pinned Commercial in their 25 for most of this half and managed to get 3 more goals. Darryl, Steve and Andrew all slotted good goals. Steve bounced one off their keepers head, Andrew back sticked in one that I had had saved and Darryl (I don't remember).

Should I mention that their keeper is a women? Kathy kept very well and she's a fine keeper – she was often left in the lurch by their poor marking in the circle – often Carro was their only forward getting back to help out. Darryls remark to the keeper about “keeping her legs together” as he scored his 2^nd goal was perhaps a little out of line but I'm sure he meant it as positive critisizm.

John Creagh pulled off some good tackles when he had too (often he was the lonely defender out there on the left) and slowed dwon the game enough for us to scramble our defence – by this time Andrew was fullback and Craig was the forwards. Terry was trying some interesting dribbling methods in the circle where he dribbled the ball around his body and then dived onto the ground – novel.

We all ran fairly hard during this game and we all have little bits of our sticks now for the BBQ at the end of the year thanks to Clive and Kevin with their tackles.

Funny Moment:

Dennis (Commercial) finally traps a ball on the left side of the field and takes a couple of steps forward. Everyone stops. He then got a call from Carro to pass it, quickly followed by several other helpfull calls of “here” and “pass the fucking ball” Followed by a “for fucks sake hit the fucking ball”. Dennis proceeds to hit it to us. Carro yells out “For fucks sake”, Clive yells out “What the fuck did you do that for” and Dennis says “You're taking this too seriously”. We are amused. Poor old Dennis.

Serious Moment

Certain policeman that plays for Commercial and umpires (and we wont mention his name, Mick) needs to catch up on some rules.

And he yellow carded me for a bad tackle earlier in the season too! (and it was a bad tackle).

Scorers: Blanchard, Sawyers(2), Tucker D (2).

Cards: None

Next game 6:30pm SHC (2) v Saints (8^th of May).