Old Sils 5 – Bromsgrove 1

Match Report by Yogi

My last match report made reference to Mourinho’s wayward man management of his players at a time when United were playing rubbish. Shows how much I know about football as they have not lost since then and have bagged the League cup this weekend just gone but God knows how!!

Anyway in a similar beginning we see the champions of England no longer champions of England as they can now no longer mathematically win the league and certainly not with the same manager that they won the league with as he has now been sacked. It’s a funny old world init!!

Talking of funny old world, I have to share a gem with you guys. Apologies if you don’t play golf or don’t like it. The article below made me smile somewhat, especially rule 7 of the Richmond golf club temporary rules in 1940. (maybe Keith will remember the rules or Alan Cave for that matter!!)

If you do take a look at the article the guy in the bunker on the right does look like a Bettridge!! http://www.therichmondgolfclub.com/history/wartime_rules/

It does make an interesting read but as I said rule 7 is a gem – you get penalised for being bombed!!!!

Talking of which, if Tony Dwyer ever tries to defend in our area again and goes about smashing our own back board again I will not hesitate to get the German bombers to direct their fire towards the left hand side of the pitch or wherever Tony happens to be!!

Talking of the missing imp, he was nowhere to be seen and we didn’t score an own goal and we won. Now there’s a coincidence if ever I saw one. Apparently he was missing cos he pulled something, I think the phrase was “no not there …higher up”!! The mind boggles!!

Anyway, the reason I am rambling is cos it was only at the end of the match that Mr Willetts senior came to me and said “oh by the way, you’re doing the report this week and I don’t even know if Pat was taking notes” – thanks Keith.

1. It might have made a difference if I had known and then I’d have paid greater attention to the goings on in the game.
2. Writing a report from the GK’s position is very difficult when you cannot see most of the action from 100yds away!!

So as far as I know the action went like this … We scored 5, they scored 1. Our goals were good, theirs was a scrappy goal after a deflection!

It was a game of 2 halves as in the first half we were good but unstructured and gave them quite a few attempts at goal usually from positions of 5 on 2 as we were on the attack and all too often lost the ball after a wayward pass somewhere. Fortunately for us, they either squandered their chances or I managed to somehow get some part of my anatomy in the way. Well I say somehow… there was one such occasion when I resembled something more akin to a beached whale than a goalkeeper. (BTW Shaun that is what you should have referred to me as when telling Tom Tyrer about the table tennis!!).

Our team was a mixture of youth and experience with el Capitano missing again still recovering from gonad surgery (well that is what Harrison told me!). Tony(Frank) still injured, Tony (own goal scorer) missing despite having 2 good eyes now, Shaun missing again having now broken his finger in 2 places, not just the original one bad break!!. Aforementioned Bettridge, although present again as a spectator he is still not fit enough to grace us with his presence on the pitch.!! (Was he ever?)

So the team this year has had to have a bit of an ever changing look to it. This week in came youngsters Max Edger and Tom Tyrer and our vice-captain Simon. In my time at the Sils (over 5 years now, where has the time gone!!), this is probably the youngest average aged side I have played in!!

I think the half time score was 3-1 with the play being fairly even on chances created. We were just slightly better at taking the chances.

Andy rush started his rout of Bromsgrove with a hard flick at the goal from our first short corner that went in between the goalkeeper and the post, though I must say, employing a post man may well have helped them!

Both goalkeepers were worked hard in the first half but we made the telling breaks. Our speed of ball passing on a very slick surface, was in fact a joy to behold. The quality of the passing was not being turned into goals. Our goals to chances ratio must be improved if we are to compete against sides that are better than this opposition.

Andy converted a second goal for himself after good work from the right by John Harrison. Keith bagged himself his customary goal with another really well taken sniffer goal after a series of attempts that the goal keeper foiled. His speed of stick work when in front of goal belies his age (if only that stick work was the same when 40 yards from goal!!).

The speed of the ball being delivered from back to front was being helped with our youthfulness. Simon in the middle really does work well in tandem with Alex, relieving the pressure off the defence and going through the usual box to box amount of work in the game. It was nice to see him playing for us. Judge Creed played a whole game (yes a whole game) in the sweeper role and did not look out of place at all!!

However, the presence of the 3 youngsters was the difference too.

Max, our youngest player at 13? was showing a lot of clever stick skills and he is going to be some player in the future. Playing on the left side of midfield or sometimes as one of the 2 strikers he did all but score today (but then he did confess to me before the game that he had broken both his favourite stick and his backup stick and that he was finding this new stick difficult to handle!). Let’s hope we can play him a few more times before losing him to the 3rds and 2nds.

Tom Tyrer (also in his early teens) was making a lot of telling contributions on the left hand side. It was marvellous to see how disciplined he kept to his position in the 2nd half after being instructed at half time and it was this sole fact which actually allowed the whole of the team to stay structured throughout the 2nd half (more to come on this).

Finally,…Sam Teal played by far and away his most solid games for the 4ths. Unwavering commitment despite being asked to play in 3 different positions he put in a real shift in the game and had it not been for the sheer number of goals that Andy scores in games, Sam would have been my MOTM.

Half time the comment from Shaun was, let’s put this game to bed, stay structured and we will win this. Well we did put it to bed and kept a clean sheet in the 2nd half (do you like the pun!). We stayed structured and it was our most complete half performance for quite a while. We created countless chances and had hardly any defending to do. This was done by sheer structure as every time they had to pass out from their defence the only option was to pass to their left back and that started off their attacks down their left side and invariably by the time it got half way down the pitch we had stolen it from them. I had no saves to make during the 2nd half and even discussed a cake recipe with Steve. (told you I’d make it all up!!).

Andy added to his goal tally 2 more times in the 2nd half again after good work from the midfield collectively and after 4 goals in a match was there ever going to be anyone getting Man of the Match other than Andy??, I think not!!.

To give Bromsgrove their credit, they did not give up easily and they did have a fair few youngsters themselves, one of whom was wearing a beanie whilst playing (so not the thing to do as far as I am concerned!! - shows weakness IMHO!!). Anyway, said person did have a lot of speed and stick work and was their only danger as he showed several times when dribbling 50 yards with the ball from his half and into ours showing some of our better tacklers a clean pair of heels. On one occasion I was waiting for the Harrison Hack but sadly since he has become a grandad, that move has been sorely missed. However not to be undone, a flame haired Old Sils midfielder, Willetts Junior did finally succumb to the Harrison Hack. In trying to stop the aforementioned beanie wearing youth, the Alex Axe did indeed incur the wrath of the umpires who up to then had been conspicuous by their absence and the first green card of the game was brandished!! At least the fines coffers was going to be added to (thanks Alex!).

This was still not enough to allow the defence to be breached and some 5 minutes later a sharp shrill of the whistle brought to an end an enjoyable game with Old Sils having won 5-1. A well-deserved win and 3 more wins out of the 4 fixtures remaining will (barring any mathematical abnormalities) ensure promotion is achieved. Poetic justice could be that on the penultimate weekend of the season we could achieve promotion by beating Olton if the 3rd place team gets beaten by the division leaders!!

So the only other thing to mention is the schoolboy error I made. It’s Wednesday now and I have done my groin in and how I did it was to park in the Bromsgrove top car park and get changed in the clubhouse. All good there! Except that almost a year to the day, Old Sills played the first match on Bromsgrove’s new astroturf pitch which happens to be some ¾ mile away down the hill. So I had to not only walk and pull my bag in full GK gear all the way past the middle car park (some ½ mile down the path) and then onto the pitch, but then obviously drag it all back to the changing rooms at the end!!! Doh!

PS. Forgot to mention Simon’s stonking reverse stick shot from the edge of the D that smashed off the post and back into play. It really deserved a goal.