U8 Vipers V St Ives Strikers
At one point in the first half I thought Harold was going to fall asleep because the ball never came near his goals. The new look defence of Archie, Nick, Jeremy and Ben did a great job stopping all attacks from St Ives and pushing the ball back into the attacking danger zone. It is great to see a group of players that can adopt a new position and do it so well.
Two great balls down the left wing from Archie and Jeremy saw the ball drop onto Jesse’s left foot early on. He tricked the defenders both times by faking to the right and then drilling home two good goals with that sneaky left foot.
Both Harold and Luke were keen to get in the action from keeper and came well out of their box to clear some long balls that came there way. This is something we have talked about at training and we will continue to encourage our keepers to get involved and push forward out of the box when the play is up the other end and act as our sweeper at the back.
2-0 at halftime was a good result, and the Vipers had controlled play very well. I was half expecting an 8 – nil by half time. St Ives switched in a stronger keeper for the second half who stopped a number of good attacking raids. Dylan as usual ran very hard, made some good tackles but most importantly did some good controlled dribbling runs and finished them with nice passes to his team mates. Dylan’s control and calmness on the ball won him this week’s man of the match. Nick brought the crowd to life with a perfect execution of the swivel turn we have been practising at training. The St Ives defender is still trying to work out where Nick went!
The Vipers sensed they were able to go in for the kill in the second half, but as a result we began to forget our positions. Jesse got his left and right confused, and Jeremy and Nick thought back meant front. We were lucky against this team but it will be a problem next week against Wahroonga. Ben stormed in for one of his trademark long range shots which sailed into the top of the net, and Archie got on the end of a great cross to slot in a high quality goal.
4-0 was a great result, but really only a warm up for the upcoming game against Wahroonga. Everyone had better bring their running and passing legs next week as it will be a tough game. The goalies who got the last tough game (Nick and Ben) – are up again this week and I am sure will be up to the challenge.