COWHC Men’s 3s vs Reigate Priory Pilgrims – 17 October 2015

After the high of last week's hard fought victory came the low of a disappointing defeat.

It's difficult to say what the difference was between the 2 performances. We had a bare 11 this week, same as last, although everyone was there on time... maybe that was it...

Anyway, we actually started very brightly and I don't think Reigate really threatened to cross into our 25 during the first 15 minutes. Our dominance in this period was only repaid with one goal however. Mike made a great run into the left corner, laid the ball back to Chris who played it to Cleashy in the D. Although his shot was saved by a combination of keeper and defender the ball ran free to Ben following up for a simple tap in.

Slowly however, the opposition began to gain a toehold in the match, thanks primarily to their brick wall with Inspector Gadget arms. Sitting just in front of their defence he began to pick everything off and thus began to orchestrate Reigate's play.

They equalised shortly after we went ahead. Martin cleared the ball off the backline resulting in a short corner from which Reigate scored, I forget the details.

Their second came rather fortunately from a long corner. They played the ball to the edge of the D, the next pass was stopped by Julian, but dropped straight to a Reigate player who had an empty goal to tuck the ball into.

We were far from out of it at half time, even though we were still struggling to find a way round their defensive midfielder. We kept working hard during the second half, but were hit relatively early on, again from a short corner. Reigate's key player received the ball at the top of the D, slipped past Chris running first and passed the ball to the player on his left. Then, the virtues of taking an early strike were shown as a first time shot found its way past Ciaran and into the net.

Pushing forward in an attempt to get ourselves back into the game meant we were then unfortunatly caught out on the counter attack. Three quick passes and another first time shot and it was 4-1.

In my opinion, the score wasn't a fair reflection of the game. To be fair, our heads didn't drop at all during the match and we will win far more than we lose if we keep playing the way we have at the start of this season. The triangles are being worked well and, while on occassion we lacked a bit of width, or held on to the ball too long this week, we'll learn and improve.

POM was Julian