Our first match of 2008 was the away fixture at Broad Town where we were going to have Elite Soccer Coaching as our opponents and after suffering a 5-0 defeat to them in our 2nd ever match, it would be interesting to see just how much we have improved.

From the start it was bad news as Harrison was unable to play in the first half due to a toe injury he sustained at training and birthday boy Lewis arrived with a very sore throat and was only able to play the first 15 minutes of the first half, before his throat got the better of him and he had to go off.

These two set backs seemed to affect the rest of the players, as we never really turned up for the first 10 minutes and were constantly 2nd in the tackles which isn't like us.

We defended quite well when the ball was in our box, but didn't really offer anything in an attacking force until a lovely pass from Euan put Isaac through on goal with only the goalie to beat which he did, but the ball went wide of the post.

The first half closed with Elite in command, but unable to find a way past Harry and Ryosuke in our defence and Conor in goal.

Half-Time 0-0

At half time Harrison decided that he would play through the pain barrier and come on in the 2nd half and this seemed to fire us up, as we now seemed to be competing in the tackles.

We were much more of a threat when attacking down the hill with Euan and Callum going close to giving us the lead with long range efforts, which went just wide of the goal.

There were times when we were caught on the break but the form of Ryosuke was outstanding, as he defended superbly throughout the half and made some tackles which were superbly timed.

Elite took the lead with a well worked corner, that was pulled back to the edge of our penalty area and smashed into the goal with the help of a deflection off Harry's shoulder and into the net.

After playing so well in the 2nd half it was disappointing to go a goal behind, especially as we had defended very well from the corners we had conceded. But credit has to go to our opponents who worked the corner very well, after we had cleared the initial two near post corners.

Yet again the character of our players shone threw as we equalized straight from the kick off, when Euan dribbled the ball past three defenders and hit a left footed shot past the keeper into the bottom corner for his 3rd goal in 4 games.

Both teams had half chances to win the game in the closing minutes, but a draw was to be the final result.

We again showed that we are now a match for the better teams who beat us in our early matches and although we were very quiet in the first half, the determination and effort we showed in the 2nd half was superb.

Player of the Match: Ryosuke Totsuka who gave a master class of defending throughout the whole match.

Credit: Paul Burke
Last modified on Thursday 31st December 2020 at 17:26