This is how the North Wellington captain described this match. An interesting term, "lucky". To paraphrase Gary Player, the better we played the luckier we got.
To be fair, the first half was hard work. The Skins didn't retain possession, rarely attacked with commitment (the only real chances fell to Symon and Darren) but defended tigerishly. The wind meant that clearing the ball was harder work, but options were not given and there was a negative mindset, possibly because the opposition came out with passion (possibly from their extensive pre-match callisthenics) and got an early goal. Other chances came to North Wellington, but they seemed keen to play it into the net rather than shooting with the wind. The 9 man Skins defence did well to limit their opportunities.
And then the second half. There was no hint of panic despite being a goal down. And pressure was applied quickly to keep the ball in the North Wellington half. An early corner was cleared to the edge of the box where Symon utilised his impressive technique to hit the ball from over waist-height and keep it under the bar. The immobile keeper was presumably unsighted, but it was a difficult chance well taken. To be honest, from that point on, the match was really only going one way. The goal brought confidence and the wind was now taking the pressure off the Skins defence. Goals were inevitable and I may well mess up the order in which they flowed.
A sweet move down the left through Aaron to Scotty C to Marsh and then back to Scotty gave him the space to place a shot in the far corner. With humility, the top scorer suggested the keeper should have got to it, but it looked a fine finish. The next goal came from another dangerous corner from Ben (whose delivery was consistently high quality) and Scotty took a good effort which looked to be covered by the defender at the far post, but he took a swing at it and put it into the back of his own net. That was a lucky goal, I guess.
The fourth was another set play: a low corner from Ben, flicked on at the near post by Jimmy for Willy to double his tally for the season, rising gently above the defenders to nod home. That's a total distance of 2 foot for his goals.
But more was to come. Some strong play down the left and middle gave Jimmy the chance to put a lobbed ball over the defence into the area, the keeper dithered and Scotty C accepted the invitation to score.
There were others chances which came and went, but the second half dominance was a welcome change from recent games where the Skins have been out-muscled, or just not wanted it as much as the opposition.
If that's luck, then I guess we'll ride it.
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3 comments:
When did the North Wellington claim it was a lucky win? I would say that sure one goal was lucky, but heck often it is the pressure that causes stuff ups. They were dominant first half, but I would say were almost too tricky and aerial balls across the face were easy as we had the height and usually the ball would go dead. They needed more in the first half to put the pressure on us, but the confidence of Symon's goal was so crucial. It gave us the positive mind set rarely seen in the past few weeks and conversely knocked them back onto their heels.
I think you'll find I deliberately hit my shot straight at the keeper's face on the correct assumption that he would move out of the way if he saw it. Very enjoyable second half that, nice to see the whole Skins team put the boot in once or twice(fairly of course). They didn't want to know once we'd decided to challenge for every ball and not allow them time for the fancy stepovers and flicks.
Sy
When I was shaking hands with the NW captain at the end he said we were lucky. I think Aaron heard something similar.
Agree completely about Symon's goal: before that we looked comfortable, but afterwards we played like winners.
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