Match Report

Match : 2nd XI v South Antrim
Date : 2007-10-27
Venue : A
Score : 0-0
Scorers :

By Kriss Leslie

I have been asked to write a match report by Ronnie, so here it goes.

On Saturday the seconds travelled to Laurelhill Sports Zone to face a South Antrim side who we didn’t know much about. But we still headed into the match confident that we could come out of the game with full points out of the first three matches of the season.

We started of with a bit of an experiment by starting with a 4-4-2 formation. But this was soon changed back to our standard formation after our play was too narrow, due to the absence of two wide men. South Antrim also started on the front foot, and it wasn’t until around ten minutes into the game that East began to mount any serious attacks.

Alan Russell started to torture the opposition in his usual fashion, as he linked up with Kriss Leslie on several occasions, and the defensive stalwarts of David Kerr, Graeme Reid, Scott Higginson, and David Blair also began to get the better of the now somewhat blunt South Antrim attack.

However, this only lead to a few half chances with Phil Brown being involved in a scramble in front of the goal with South’s keeper, Kriss Leslie having two deflected efforts, and a shot from Alan Russell from just inside the D. But unfortunately, none of these seriously tested the keeper.

In the second half East continued where they left off. The defence made easy work of what they were faced with, and once again Rambo, Kriss and Alan drove down the right hand side. As the half continued, South Antrim basically began to "park the bus in front of the net". With so many South players defending, East had very few clear cut chances, apart from a shot from Ronnie McDowell which went just wide, and David Tumilson being one on one with the keeper.

The presence of what seemed like 10 South Antrim players in their D may not have gave us many goal-scoring opportunities from normal play, but it did give us the chance to take the lead from short-corners. We had a lot of attempts to score, but only one shot from Alan Russell really tested their short corner defence team.

Instead of going home with full points we went home with a point. Our inability to be more inventive from the short corners somewhat cost us in this match, as we had more than enough chances to take all the points home from a one sided game. Short corners should equal GOALS, not wasted opportunities. Hence the reason why we will be working on that aspect of the game on Tuesday night, which should be an extra incentive for everyone to attend training. Who knows, it could be a similar scenario in our next match!

Overall, everyone played very well, and its looking like it could be a good season. But everyone must keep up the hard work! Remember, draws could turn into wins, and a good season could be a GREAT season if everyone stays committed and attends training every week!