| Spartak again had a full squad of
14 to select from and with Doc opting out of this one it was left for Dave to bear
the brunt of team selection. This wasn't too stressful however with Andrew suffering
from 'hard grounditis' also known as shin splints it left only 4 defenders to pick
from. As punishment Andrew was thrown the clock and whistle and asked to adjudicate
this epic encounter. Other notable team selections were Neil starting on the right
of midfield and our usual faithful right mid John having to switch to his apparently
favoured left.
The day started well with stand in captain Dave
winning the toss and deciding to change ends much to everyones despair, how would we
fair kicking away from the hedge end first half? It proved to be a good decision
with Spartak winning everything in the first 20 minutes. Defence was solid with
Miles not being troubled, Midfield was winning everything on the ground and in the
air with the strikers, especially Clive running their socks off. This culminated in
a goal for Clive created from some great pressurising of the goal keeper whose
clearance went straight into Clive leaving him to tap in.
This was
the turning point in the half and from then on it seemed Spartak could do nothing
right. Orange House gained control and started playing the ball around. The pressure
told and they scored just before half time.
With Spartak's track
record, 1-1 at half time wasn't going to be enough and when the shortest person on
the field rose like a salmon and placed a bullet header into the top corner soon
after half time heads seemed to drop. However the defense rallied and prevented
Orange house too many clear cut chances (apart from when they put it over when it
was easier to score). Spartak failed to create chances even after a double
substitution but with quarter of an hour to go a seemingly simple pass from Bren
resulted in an inspired dummy from Fricker, catching their defense of guard letting
substitite Chris in and he slotted it past the keeper into the far corner, an
excellent finish.
At 2-2 Spartaks heads went up but only to be
dropped again by a goal from an Orange house corner which left Sam injured.
It finished 2-3 leaving Spartak to yet again wonder what really went
wrong. On the positive side the team spirit was greatly improved in a game in which it was
extremely tested.
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