Not the outing we expected

We've come up against a couple of well-drilled sides and a couple of young sides, and unfortunately this Saturday saw us against a young, well-drilled side. Like a Venn Diagram but where there are some people who want pizza AND chips.

Anyway...

Saturday's game clearly showed that we have some remarkable individual prowess in the team - notable performances from Mackenzie leading the defensive line, without whom we would have taken a much larger beating, and Tom Smith who delivered most of the opportunities in the second half.

First half taught us a couple of important elements that we took through into the second:

1. We can't afford to take pace off the ball at a free hit. We need to seize that opportunity and convert it into chances on goal. We saw a lot more of this in the second half and catching Ashby off-guard worked to our advantage.
2. Communication. We know each other's names and we know when people are in space. Let's put those two things together. We need to let our players know when they have time on the ball, in which case lets use possession to our advantage* and if a mark is directly on the player make yourself available for the offload.
3. Quick offloads are great, but if there's no open player, hang on to the ball while our boys find space**

*the other team only scored when they had the ball.
**seriously, they only scored when they had the ball.

4. Movement off the ball and general fitness. We made more opportunities for ourselves in the second half BUT this was at the expense of not running back quick enough and leaving the defence open to attack.

and although four of the goals went against us in the last 35 minutes, this looked to be more down to the technical ability of the opposition than Sils pushing too far up the pitch, and we shouldn't take that too much to heart. Let's not forget that playing a bear XI against a side with replacements would always have its challenges!!