‘The Edge’ - Home vs Crowborough Athletic Juniors October 16, 2008
Posted by editor in : Matches , trackbackSome say, he’s a concert pianist and lives on raw meat , all we know is that he provides anonymous match reports and calls himself ‘The Edge’…
With wounds of the heavy defeat to our bogey team, Crowborough, of two weeks ago still smarting it was time to host them at home and seek our revenge and whilst the result went in favour of the bogey men once again there were a huge amount of positives to be taken from a game that was a joy to watch.
Without wishing to appear disrespectful, and mindful that I have not seen every game this season, it was the first time I can honestly say, hand on heart, that what I witnessed was a real team performance. Obviously given the result there were one or two areas to be worked on, but the general performance saw everyone playing for each other instead of the MAD’s (Mums and Dads) on the touchline. Hopefully we will see this team spirit continue until it will undoubtedly fall apart again when the HAG’s (Hangers-on and Girlfiends) become the distraction of the day.
Whilst the team performance was the highlight of the day a special mention to Charlie and Jake for their contributions this week.
Charlie has been a superb addition to the squad and has brought a stability and presence which appear equally effective in defence or midfield. Rumour has it he’s not a bad goalie either. Just the striking bit to sort out and he will be the complete utility player. What he has shown is that playing simple passing football is very effective, letting the ball beat the player, doing what you can do well, not trying to over complicate things and not overplay possession. Good work Charlie keep it going.
Jake, even though he does wear those fancy sock, show pony, things, was very impressive this week, not necessarily for what he did with the ball but for what he did without it. His movement off the ball, running into spaces and providing options was a joy to watch. Many of the drills that are done in training are geared up to passing and movement and Jake showed that he is taking that on board and bringing what he has learned in training into match senario’s. Well done Jake an excellent example to your team mates.
The result again did not reflect performance or possession as for much of the game we dominated and outplayed what was a good Crowborough side. Where we fell away was on being hit on the break through the middle which gifted the Bogeymen more than one of their goals. As a team you need to identify those things during the course of the game and communicate with each other to deal with them.
Two controversial incidents did have an impact on the game, firstly Regan’s schizophrenia kicking in and causing his ‘Regan the keeper’ persona to dominate his thoughts instead of ‘Regan the defender’ as he leapt like a salmon to palm the ball clear and save a sure goal. Hush descended over the ground as the referee reached into his pocket…..
At this point I would like to make mention of the sportsmanship of both Mick, the Crowborough coach and Ronnie, the bogiest of the bogey men, who both immediately made representations to the referee not to issue what could easily have been an automatic red card. Well done guys (loud applause from Uckfield Grashoppers)…………….
………..and produced a yellow.
The second incident had the crowd, management and Alan Hansen calling for the introduction of goal line technology or a Russian linesman as the debate raged as to whether Toby’s shot had indeed crossed the line. The record books and more importantly the referee said it didn’t, but that could have had a significant bearing on the game. Having been 3-0 down at half time the game could have quickly run away from us, however a positive start to the second half saw Jake score in the 5th minute to make it 3-1, although not given a number of parents did believe that Tobes was mugged and that the ball had crossed the line. It wasn’t given but getting back to 3-2 Crowborough were rocking under the pressure and who knows what would have happened. As we pushed forward right to the end a late goal made it 4-1 to Crowborough which didn’t really reflect on how we’d played.
Anyway as disappointing as the result was I and I know may of the others who watched went away not really feeling that disappointed as I felt I had witnessed one of the best team performance to date where as I have said everyone played for each other, heads didn’t drop on going a couple of goals behind and the level of effort and commitment was there to the final whistle. Could maturity be coming to visit? Let’s hope so and keep this spirit going. A joy to watch, well done.
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