Round 1 O35 Div1 1sts NORTH SYDNEY 3 LANE COVE 4

It was a game of two halves, neither dominated by Spurs (Surely North Sydney –Ed?). Martin Heidegger the German philosopher and Father of existential phenomenology explains how there is no one reality, there is no one truth. This game against Lane Cove illustrates this point well. At 4:4:2 we won 75 minutes of football 2:1, unfortunately at 5:3 2 we lost 15 minutes of football 3:1. However considering the referees performance this may be reported at Street Harbour losing to East Canberra 5:1 indeed with his grip on reality it may be written up as 3 sets to love.

It all started so beautifully with Captain fantastic, Gary Fallowfield scoring from a near post corner within 5 minutes. But old habits die hard and as with last season he lasted only another 10 minutes before he took the hump and limped off with a back injury. I suggest Quasimodo as a nick name for the rest of the season. Meanwhile Lane cove playing at a pace and intensity we could not match scored 3 goals, 2 of distinctly average quality, more self inflicted than anything then another to be fair which was of genuine class. After this the gaffer and Coxy rang the changes from the bench and in the formation and the remainder of the half settled down into a far more even contest.

At half time Mark made the point that unless we stood up here, we could be facing a drubbing, so stand up we did, with greater intensity in the challenges. Having come on at left back Pat Acheampong played hard and fast combining well with Micky Michaloudis, to ensure we looked safe and dangerous down the left hand side. With Adam Fisher and Iain Black securing the right by putting in a power of work and Mark in the middle, Lane Cove were reduced to the long ball game and were our goal was not greatly threatened. However we needed a goal to get us back in it and we should have had a penalty, in fact we should have had two. Alain Rogina (or was it scud) wasn’t not so much brought down more like assaulted in the box only to have his enthusiastic claim waved away. Capping a bad day for Paul Hughes, injury struck him down and ignoring his grandfathers advice about never volunteering, Iain Black headed in goal, well not literally but he might as well had, more of which later. With greater freedom won in the midfield we finally got a goal and what a cracker it was. Micky hit a peach of a left foot free kick curler leaving their keeper waving at no one and gainfully employed only in picking the ball out the back of the net. At this point the belief pulsed through the team and we pushed harder for an unlikely equaliser only to have it swiftly kicked out us by what would have appeared to the casual onlooker as a goal keeping howler.

In fact what happen was that as Iain Black took a goal kick from the left to the unmarked Chris Hanley on the right touchline, the ball took a bobble and he as flashed from a nearby flat with the laser pointer so beloved by Qantas pilots (are you sure that’s what happened? – Ed). This along with the fact that the Lane Cove striker was galloping in an offside position across to mark Chris meant that it was intercepted and we were back to a 2 goal deficit. It took a few minutes for us to gather ourselves before the Lane Cove keeper was gathering the ball from his net courtesy of an even better Micky strike, this time from open play. Top right corner, thank you very much. With only 3 minutes left there was no time for another and so we went down 4:3. But our story is that we fought hard to get back in the match, scored 3 genuine goals to their 1 and can look forward to the season as a team who will be hard to beat. And Iain has hung up his gloves for good.

 

 

 

 

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