Pembury Reserves 0 v 3 Paddock Wood Predators
Last Saturday we came up against Paddock Wood’s first XI, who were buoyed by their previous weeks result - a 4-1 victory versus Roselands.
We had a squad of 12, welcoming in 4 players that didn’t play the previous weekend, and giving three players, who started on the bench against Capel, a starting position.
We started in a 4-4-2 formation, but unfortunately we were soon on the back foot as Paddock Wood started brightly. This pattern of play continued for the first 15 minutes or so, and it was from one of these PW attacks that led to the first goal. To our credit we didn’t let our heads drop and started to get back into the game as Lewis Drury - starting in the unfamiliar position of centre midfield - began closing down the PW midfield.
Unfortunately with about 10 mins to go in the first half, we gave possession away down our left, and PW broke quickly. Two passes later and the ball was crossed in from our left, and the PW attacker had a relatively free header 8 yards out and made no mistake. We need to learn from these mistakes, i.e. don’t give the ball away cheaply, and if we do, we need to work very hard to close crosses down, and similarly we need to challenge the ball, even if we don’t think we will get there, as it might just mean the attacker takes his eye off the ball and we escape without a goal being scored.
2-0 at half time, and unfortunately Brynn Salter making his league debut had to be replaced due to injury, with Connor Fitzgerald making his league debut in a straight swap.
The second half continued in much the same vain as the first, but as the half continued we did start to gain more of a presence in the match. Matt Conroy started to make inroads down our left, and it was good all round performance from Matt. Unfortunately, PW kept attacking and we eventually conceded a third goal.
With this in mind, we decided to go man-for-man at the back with the intention to release our midfield to attack and try and find a way back into the game. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the goal that might of given us some impetuous for the remainder of the game.
The referee, who had a good game, blew the final whistle and we knew that we had worked very hard for the majority of the 90 minutes, but once again we had nothing to show for our efforts.
Team:
S. Balcombe
Tom Lowe
N. Forward
D.Fitzgerald
B. Salter
R. Webster
O.White
Lewis Drury
M.Conroy
Y.Marouani
M.Humphrey
Subs :
C. Fitzgerald (for B. Salter)
