Mustangs went into the top of the table clash full of confidence off the back of three good wins. Squad was good with the return from injury of Liam White and no school commitment for Craig Millar. George Kokkinos was in goal after a lengthy absence due to injury. However, just when you feel things are going well we were undone after 15 minutes with David Orr sadly limping out of the game with a hamstring injury. Orr Jnr. stepped into central midfield to replace his crocked father!!
It is very difficult to say much about the game as I have to respect this is a public site and we don’t wont to criticise, so I will keep the match report very brief.
Both sides obviously wanted to win and in the early exchanges there was some chat about some decisions and, having been warned, there was a little too much chat that resulted in PWs being made to retreat 10yds twice for the same offence only for a rather loud expletive to come from the PW bench towards our umpire Mark Hutton. Child Safeguarding kicked in and the player was requested to keep his language down due to young people and shouldn’t swear at an umpire. Having been asked to leave it to the PW umpire I did and he had a nice chat and he remained on the bench and the team with 11 on the pitch.
Following a period of pressure in the opposition half we managed at last to take a lead when Dan Kerven flicked in a shot from a narrow angle. This is what we deserved on the balance of play in the first half and indeed we should have had at least a second. However, a narrow lead despite some best efforts for it not to be.
Half time came and someone was allowed to rest an arm that must have been aching having held it in one position for most of the half. The half time instructions were to keep the opposition out of our 25yd area and defend high so we didn’t face a possible barrage of short corners. Sadly we fell too deep and got what we deserved and the expected a barrage of short corners.From one short corner the ball found its way into the Mustang net. 1 v 1.
With time running out, and just over 10 minutes remaining, Mustangs won a short corner. On the way back to the half way line I issued a short instruction to our forwards only for an opponent to mention he thought my line was from a Disney film. Whilst debating which particular Disney film he thought it was from there was a screech of a whistle from the umpire. I went over hoping he may have the answer only to find him taking something from his pocket. It was a piece of paper with writing on it. Was it a review of the latest Disney film? Oh no, as he turned it over there was the colour yellow! I asked what for but no reply just the shabby piece of paper with yellow!
But enough about me and ‘Fantasia’ or was it ‘Dumbo’, oh well I will never know now which film the line was from. Back to the game. More short corners against the 10 men of Epsom and with the the final result ending 1 v 3 to PWs.
We sadly were not at our best when we should have been. We were slow in going forward and subsequently never found the space to do more damage.
And they all lived happily ever after. The End.