Today the match was played in honour of John Gibson long-term supporter and grandparent to a couple of the club's players, who sadly passed away this week. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family.
The match kicked off at a fast pace with end-to-end entertainment from both teams, Anstey took advantage of our stand-in goalkeeper by capitalizing on his nervousness. Let it be noted Luke did some magnificent saves and got into the role more as the game progressed.
Defensively the boys held ground but because of the shuffle around, a little indecisiveness crept in.
The second half showed more promise, with some fantastic breaks through midfield leading to a run through the middle by Siyam tucking it out to Evan on the edge of the box then squaring it onto Mass to tuck away a curling shot into the top right-hand corner of the net.
Soon after from a tackle deep in our own half Siyam picked out the most perfect ball for Tom to run onto and leave the defenders for dust and tuck away an equalizer for Phoenix.
Unfortunately, a few minor errors led to the other goals for Nomads.
I do feel that the Nomads were no better a team than ourselves, thigh strain injuries of Lucas and Olly, lady luck and some inexperience helped them to their win.
Goalkeeper Luke first time in goal, a bit of a baptism of fire, truly got better as the game went on.
Defenders, Matty, Josh, Cam and AJ all put in solid performances.
Midfield, Lucas, Evan, Siyam and Tom pressed the ball well and link up play is developing.
Forwards, Dan, Mass, Finn and Olly made some tidy runs and pressed well.
Now, in the boy's defense, it has been a trying time for the boys of late, with many changes that have happened from no preseason into an early new season start. We have had players go and new ones come in, which has meant the boys have had to develop and learn new relationships and formations as we go along.
The positive points are that the relationships are developing and they are starting to learn how to play together and glimpses of combination work are beginning to be seen between players. The speed of play has increased, now to work on accuracy and minimum touch play.
With a few more sessions and a half-term break ahead, it will allow the boys to get into the right head space for forthcoming matches.
The boys have had a hard lesson to learn with not having dealt with losses like this before in any previous season, hopefully, they can put this behind them and show how we can return to a winning format.
I want to applaud the boys as they showed dignity in their defeat and fair play to them, there was no finger-pointing or blame laid at anyone's feet so well done and I'm
sure we will be back to our winning ways very soon.
Big thanks to Danny for running the line ( I won't mention the questionable no-flag call, haha!!), and a huge thanks to all the parents for all their support today.
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