Highworth Juniors were the visitors to Rylands Way today and they were in buoyant mood after a good win against Swindon Soccer Skills last week. So we knew we would have to be on top of our game if we were going to get anything out of this fixture.
The match started and straight away it was obvious that the lads hadn′t heeded the warning and were giving H/J far too much time and space. But despite this for the next ten minutes the match was pretty even with both teams having chances to open the scoring. I always felt that the first goal would be decisive and if we could score it H/J would lose that bit of belief and we would probably go on to win the game. But unfortunately it was H/J who scored first and this increased their confidence and the pressure was now on us to make sure we got back on level terms quickly. So when Josh popped up in the area to stab home an equaliser it looked as though we were back in the game, but then we let H/J score twice more by not getting tight to them and letting them dictate the play. But again we managed to pull ourselves back into it when Max scored our second, finishing well after picking up the ball on the halfway line and going on one of his mazy runs to make the score 3-2 at half time.
At half time we were pretty confident of completing the comeback and going on to win the game as we knew we were capable of upping the tempo and getting our passing game going. But just as we started to look comfortable we were hit on the break and conceded a fourth. At this point we did start to play some good football but H/J held strong and managed to score a fifth which proved to be too much for us to come back from and Highworth deservedly went on to win the match 5-2.
After getting back to our best again over the last few weeks and with a few results going against the top teams I genuinely thought we had got ourselves back in the hunt to compete for the title. So today′s result against one of the weaker teams in our league was very disappointing. There were too many individual errors today and also H/J were prepared to roll up their sleeves and battle for the 3 points on offer while we seemed content to let them do it. The strongest part of our game over the last three years has been our passing but at the moment to many players are looking to beat two or three players instead of playing the easy pass which usually ends up with us losing possession and putting unneeded pressure back on ourselves, so we must go back to basics and continue to do what we have done so well in the past. The MOTM award again goes to Mitchell for being solid in defence and again making the game look so easy by always playing the simple pass and not over complicating things.
MOTM – Mitchell Terry
Credit: Unknown
Last modified on Saturday 26th December 2020 at 14:37
