Good start not maintained

Sils had the tough challenge of facing an in-form Stone outfit, with only 12 players on Saturday.

They started very well, winning a Penalty Stroke in the first few minutes due to a Stone player going to ground in the D and playing the ball with his body. Jamie Glynn flicked into the top left corner for the home side to take a deserved lead.

However, the lead did not last, as within 2 minutes, Stone had turned the ball over in midfield, and then Tom Harrison's footing gave way to leave an attacker free in the D to rifle home. A few minutes later and Stone had their second, a well executed PC leaving one of their strikers to slide in and deflect home.

The game then settled down, and Sils regained their composure, stringing together some good passages of play, and Max Levenger could have scored twice, once with a far-post deflection from an Andre Tchakhotine cross, and then once as the keeper made a great double save at his right post to deny Levenger's flicked shot. However, from this passage of play, Sils had won a corner, and seconds later it was 2-2, Andre Tchakhotine taking the corner quickly to exchange passes with Thomas Watson to once again pick out Levenger at the far post who this time made no mistake.

Unfortunately, as has so often been the case with the Sils this year, just as they have got back into the game, disaster struck. First Jamie Glynn was the victim of a sequence of mis-timed tackles, picking up a yellow-card as he knocked one of their defenders to the ground, and then with only 90 seconds to go before half-time, Tom Harrison's clearance was deemed as dangerous by the umpire and Stone took a quick free-hit and were able to bundle the ball home to take a half-time lead of 3-2.

The second half was a clear demonstration of why Stone are pushing for promotion. They used their experience and rolled their subs effectively to maintain pressure on the Sils defence, and whilst the home team did have a few opportunities themselves, the visitors were just more clinical in front of goal, and scored a 4th to effectively kill off the game. Sils then began to commit more players forward to chase the game and Stone scored two more in the last 10 minutes to put a slightly flattering angle to the final score.

An encouraging performance against a high-flying side, but the side's challenging run post-Christmas continues.