Match Report

Opposition: Commercial

Date: 18-May-2004

Time: 8:10pm

Tonight we managed to front with 9 people and scrounged up a couple of helpers from Storm (Thanks Dave and Van). The forward line was rearranged to suit the new members and away we went against Commercial who had three subs. (But no Rambo)

1st half.

Like last week we launched into attack after attack but failed to penetrate their tight defence inside the 25. We need to work harder to get corners and then to convert these opportunities as from week to week we're meeting packed defences. Commercial played a close system up the right side to come out of their 25 which worked well most of the time as for some reason we were often short of an inner (Steve was resting his limbs). In this half we all played as though we were in mud and until today I thought the game was slow but I hurt and others have confirmed that they hurt too - it was the continual running in midfield that wore us out I think. We turned over far too much ball on lazy passes.

Half time score 0–0

Pretty quiet halftime talk, I think we were a little tired and surprised that we hadn't scored. They have some good players and we had failed to make the most of our opportunities. The balls coming into the circle from the right were'nt finding our sticks (more of a hit and hope option).

2^nd Half

Commercial changed their tactics at the break and we saw the end of the tight control in their back pocket and they began to speculate a bit. They also marked up a lot tighter forcing us to move the ball a little wider and faster - something that we didn't do too well as we often turned the ball over straight to them through bad passing. During this half Rickey had to pull off a couple of good saves from penalty corners to keep us in the game - our corners were mostly poorly executed or well defended. Steve finally scored with about 10 minutes to go from broken play. Ray defended well and is still quietly nursing an injury as too is John and Steve and me - looking forward to Greg playing next week.

Overall this game looked slow (like we were on mogodon) but in retrospect it may have gotten slow because we had to do a fare bit of running due to our high amount of turnovers in their half. We need to look for more free hits when we notice this developing - the trick is, I suppose, is noticing this happening. We again missed countless opportunities with shots going across empty nets etc. but at least we got the three points. Points aren't necessary anymore really - but we do need to fine tune our game for the semis so lets see if we can actually put all 11 of us on the field next week at 9:20 (yeah right!).

As highligths and lowlights go I think Neils pass, where he missed the ball completely was the funniest of the night mind you their inside missed the ball several times in a row at one stage and still we didn't tackle him - yep, we looked a little jaded at times.

Final Score 1–0.

Scorers: Sawyers

Cards: None

Injuries: Can't afford any more!