Mount Colah Football Club

Game 8, 4 June - U13A vs Northbridge

This week's rain put paid to most of the matches for the round. Only two of the 6 scheduled games for our division went ahead, so the points table will be meaningless until the catch-up matches are played. Nevertheless, we turned up on a beautiful sunny morning to find... Astroturf! What a ground! Today was a day for some re-jigging because Greg was sick, and Matthew was nursing a sore tailbone and unable to take his normal position in goal. Cam K took his place, and Matthew slotted into defence.

Northbridge have been travelling pretty well; there's not much between the top half dozen teams in the comp, so we were expecting a tough match and we got one. We kicked off and dominated most of the first 10 minutes, mostly camped in their half. Three minutes in a great build-up involving Zac, Sam B, Georgina and Nikki who bagged his first for the day. We had another chance at 10 minutes, with Josh shooting from the right... into the side netting. Then Northbridge countered, and almost had an overlap on our back line, with Matthew scrambling to cover. Cam N took the ball out of defence from the resulting corner, and got three quarters of the way down the field. This was end-to-end stuff, helped by two teams with good passing games and a desire to attack.

Cam K had already touched the ball a few times but had to come off his line to defuse a run-away, clearing from the edge of the penalty area. Well timed; that was danger time. The rest of the half was more of the same, and tough on the spectators. Players were being subbed regularly to take a breather, and both teams started to focus on closing down the danger men. We had another opportunity when a shot was spilled by the Northbridge keeper, with Josh in hot pursuit. In the resulting tangle the keeper came up with the ball but it was a near-run thing. Then, just before the end of the half, Northbridge had another chance and shot wide. We went to the break 1-0 up with the players looking for their sugar hit.

Northbridge kicked off the second half, surged down field and got a shot away. With Cam K beaten and Matthew in the last line of defence, he did what he had done the previous 6 games... used his hands. Penalty, but the ref saw that it was a reflex and didn't show the red card. Cam K almost saved it too. The shot was deflected high, and in regathering he carried it over the line. 1-1 and game on. More fast movement for the next 10 minutes or so, saw Cam have to pull off another couple of saves including a scrambling effort followed by a good kick downfield, which saw us press for a corner. A lovely ball fell to Nikki, who left-footed it into the net. Great corner, 2-1. Once again we were under the pump. Northbridge forced another corner from the restart, we didn't clear the ball, and they got a shot away, on target and a certain goal until Sam H appeared from nowhere to stop the shot. Fast forward a few minutes, we had the corner, they didn't clear, and the keeper pulled off a good save. The last 5 minutes were mostly Northbridge, with a couple of corners and a whole lot more pressure applied. A dog provided a bit of light relief, wanting to play ball and delaying proceedings for a couple of minutes. With less than a minute to go Cam saved another shot, hoofed it downfield, and Zac sent in yet another great cross to a rampaging Josh, who gleefully buried it... offside.

So, we finished 2-1 winners but that could have gone either way. Well played everyone, it was hugely entertaining from the sidelines, and everyone did their bit. The awards this week went to Sam H for his relentless defence with occasional forays into midfield, and to Zac who caused no end of trouble for the opposition with his creative play on the right flank.

Denis