Match Report

Ginger Power! Sports dumped out of the Cup by the 3G’s.

Bearing in mind we reached the semi final last year, we feel confident once again that we can go a long way this year and hope to go one step further this time. Junior Sports have long been a ‘local rival’ of ours, it seems that so many players know each other and their manager is a really decent guy, the games are always played in good spirit. Today was no exception. The pitch was a decent surface today but very narrow and the referee was a massive improvement on last week, as he let the game flow.

We started the game poorly, it seemed we were totally disorganised and Sports had the upper hand. Our defence particularly seemed very tentative and were making some poor decisions. They went ahead after 10 mins after they blew away our left side, crossed and finished unchallenged in our box. We gradually worked our way back into the game and managed to get some passes going, suddenly we changed into a unit. O’Donoghue started winning ball and Stevens began to prompt the play. Stevens calmly ‘passed’ a left sided free kick into the path of an onrushing Adams who finished to make it 1-1, a ginger strikes. Our tails were up, Wray had a shot cleared off the line from close range when it looked easier to score. Soon after he also saw a powerful left foot drive cannon off the bar after a brilliant turn left their defender struggling. Half time was approaching when Adams delivered a free kick into their box which was met with a looping header from Dale which gave us a 2-1 lead. Another ginger strike! Bridges and Wray were constantly proving a handful for the Sports defence and they struggled to cope with their pace and aggression. The latter had another effort on goal, this time a sweetly struck right foot volley just cleared the bar. 2-1 at half time.

We continued the 2nd half in the ascendancy and Wray finally got his goal after good work from Bridges on the right pulling the ball back from the byeline, Wray slotting home from just inside the box. A ginger hat-trick!

Sports were struggling now, everything was under control from Farnborough. Burkett had little to do in goal and we were showing our class. Stevens charged through for our fourth after a lovely ball dinked over the top from Murphy. Stevens slammed the ball home from just inside the box. Note, Stevens is not a ginger!

This was one of our best performances of the season so far. We must learn to get into gear from the very start, our deficit could have been far worse than 1-0 by the time we decided to start playing. I’ve said before that I don’t like to single out individuals but today Bridges and Wray proved almost unplayable for the opposition and O’Donoghue’s simple but battling approach proved a superb foil for Stevens’ marauding runs forward and intelligent passing. The overall performance was outstanding today and merited a 9/10 rating easily. So, it was all down to Ginger power was it? That’s fine by me, serve up some more please the 3G’s…