COWHC Mens 3s v Purley Walcountians Men's 5s - 13 February 2016

A special thank you to Sharon, Bill, Ghian, Chalky and Mike for stepping up and helping us get enough for a team, the need for subs proved critical for us. Thank you. Also a big thank you to Hamjam for playing despite an injury, I am left suspecting after a solid performance that the "injury" was an excuse to not play in the cold and rain. Thank you also to AJ for umpiring at short notice.

I want to say a big thank you to all who helped out this weekend to earn a solid 2-2 draw, with Corney scoring from a P-Flick and dP from a short. To have conceded two goals from 3 shots means that Sandersted will feel the better of the two with this result. However, we proved again our strong mentality and kept going at the oppo even after conceding against the run of play, twice! We kept our heads up and played our patient style, and kept going at them. The silver lining from this draw is we didn't drop points against the top two as Reigate (the buggers) have done us a big favour and beat Sandersted. Only 1 point separates the top 3 teams. Both PW's and us have to play Sandersted before the end of the season so lets make sure we have the numbers available to have a full team with subs so we can win ourselves promotion.

As for the match it was challenging with the oppo pulling together speed and youth in attack with some bruisers at the back which they used to great effect to man handle us off the ball and quickly counter attack with some "simple" 1-2 passing, damn those kids were annoying. Overall we had the better of the match with some very nice and extended passages of play that had them really questioning themselves as to how to handle us and get out of their half. Unfortunately this dominance didn't quite result in goals with a number of last gasp tackles, stops and some shots going fractionally wide. I was also left thinking that the "ball, stick, man" mantra deployed by their defence wasn't necessarily in that order.

From the amount of short corners we won our conversion rate was terrible. This reaffirms that we need to work on them and I want to say sorry to Corney who often found himself open on the near post. I will get there and learn to make better decisions and pass. Still kinda new to this active short interaction and decision making.

Their front two players, cheating by being young and fast, really played into their counter attacking style but thanks to a very solid back line of Speddo, Grimbo, Mike, Martin and Hamjam really kept them bottled up with some great tackling, marking and intercepting the long ball passes. Some scramble defence was also successfully deployed more than once, well done lads. This solid defending which starts at the front on their 16s is proving time and again why we as a team have the lowest goals conceded. Great work everyone!

Midfield was an interesting battle with their wingers, being surprisingly fast and physical, meant they often tried to overload down the sides but again solid defending by the team made all the difference. We managed to choke out most of what went through center midfield as they were less about speed and more about positioning, making it easier to take them out the game and make us look good. As for attacking play, Ghian and Ben were both causing some serious issues in the attacking midfield role and again seemed to be targeted for interesting tackles with 3 or more sticks flying in at any one time. Mammoth efforts from Swifty and Bill on the wings in both attacking and defending really caused them issues. As pointed out by Corney it seems in the 2nd half we forgot that we had a right side of the pitch. I will be working on dictating play and help spread the ball around more to avoid being channeled so much.

Upfront, again Corney is proving the difference this season, opening the scoring for us with a well taken P-Flick after a deliberate foot on the line by one of the defenders. As always Corney was causing the oppo to assign 2-3 defenders to keep him penned in and often reverting to fouling as they couldn't tackle him. Corneys performance meant that gaps keep opening up and allowing us some solid opportunity to get into the D and often getting us a short but not many shots. As mentioned before practice on these shorts will turn to goals which in turn becomes wins.

Overall we have proven again why we are in the league title race and why we deserve promotion. Great work to everyone on Saturday and I look forward to playing the rest of the season. COME ON!!!!

If memory serves, and AJ confirms, I believe PoM went to dP (me, Hurrah!) with Corney getting the his customary DoD for no particular reason other than no one else did anything to earn it.