Old Boys Host Southland
Old Boys were all set for an important clash with Southend on Saturday. But late on Thursday word funnelled through that they had heard of Jono and Hamish’s goal scoring exploits from the week before and were very afraid. Thus the match was defaulted and Old Boys banked 3 points with a 3-0 win. Not a bad result for the team as we were looking a little short with Joel and Hayden out and Scotty D getting the late call up for the Lions test. Not sure he’s allowed back after that streaking effort too.
Hearing of our predicament with no match, Luis and his Southland charges came to the rescue. They were also matchless owing to the fact that their opponents Queenstown were involved in Chatham Cup action against Dunedin Tech. A friendly was teed up at Waverley Park.
We went into the match with the bare 11 with super coach Reuben reprising a role at Left Mid not seen at this level in the last decade. We also had a reshuffle up front with Billy Mack himself leading the line. The message from Grant ahead of the match was “let’s play down Cuffy’s side cos Reuben and Elliot have no gas to run that line”.
The first half was one in which we felt we dominated a lot of the attacking exchanges with Southland happy to play with the ball around their back line where we didn’t put much pressure on. Several decent opportunities for Jared, Mike and Reuben. Finishing not our strong point! Southland opened the scoring with a great drive by Ryo from outside the box which found the corner of the net.
At halftime Grant’s annoyance at our finishing was plain to see but otherwise happy with what we were creating and how the defence was working. We opted to keep the team the same with just Mike B on the bench following Div 1’s win over Winton and Atain joining our bench for the second stanza also having had no luck against the strong work of Hammy and Danny.
A change of formation for Southland saw them start to dominate the midfield battles. They would end up scoring three more goals in the second half (unfortunately all reasonably soft) and miss a bunch of other better crafted opportunities. For us the fitness and lack of subs started to tell and the last 15 mins were about survival as Foz, Elliot and Danny went off with various niggles.
Difficult to single out a man of the match as everyone left it all out there. Key learning = score goals in the first half.
Still a good warmup for next week’s season defining match vs Gore where we look to wrest back the Larry and the League lead.
