Palace 3 v 1 Pembury Sunday Reserves
After the highs of last week we were brought back to earth with a bump this Sunday as we were beaten by a hard working Palace team who were clearly up for the fixture somewhat more than we were. If ever the merits of good preparation over bad were required to be shown in a game then this was the evidence. The Palace boys were at the game early, ready and in good shape having been made fully aware of the importance of the game to them. In contrast we had several of our team just getting out of bed following a very late night out and some players that even failed to show - hardly ideal preparation for what we all knew would be a tough game. It is no surprise that I report that we were out muscled, out fought and out run - the only thing I would add was that we were not out played as our ability on the ball was their equal unfortunately without the other applications this counts for nothing.
We fell behind on 17 minutes when we gave the ball away and then preceded to let Tony Loderio waltz round several feeble attempts at a tackle before he was upended in the box. A clear penalty which Lodeiro got up to take and score. This appeared to wake us from our lethargy for a short while we started to get hold of the midfield and attack their defence. Matt R-T was clearly the target for some rather crude tackles but eventually got away on the half hour and crossed for Wylesy to head home. I hoped that this might galvanise our game but within 7 minutes Palace were back in front when Dave Hymers ran on to a long punt downfield to head over James in goal.
At half time we stressed the need to get the ball down and play and that if we made them work they would run out of steam. Unfortunately though we conceded within 15 minutes of the restart when we again failed to tackle to Lodeiro and he finished again from inside the box. We rang the changes where possible to try to give the midfield some impetus with the hope of pulling something back however despite being much more of a threat we squandered the opportunities we had or their keeper saved well when called upon.
Hopefully we will learn a good lesson from this that I thought we may have learned last year - that you are never better than other teams unless you apply yourselves correctly. To their credit Palace performed well and deserved the win but they wouldn’t have beaten us on Sunday had we played anywhere near the level that we have performed in our other games. If we learn from this then this may be a good wake up call for the remainder of the season - if we don’t then we will beat a lot of good sides on our day during the rest of season but also suffer several defeats like Sunday.
Team:
J.Larkin
Tom Gent
Sammy Balcombe
O.Bryant
J.Campbell
P.Poliski
S.Bent
M.Wood
R.Curd
M.Rice-Tucker
Mark Wyles
Subs:
O.White (for Wood)
M.Lester (for Bent)
J. Waldock (for Balcombe)
