River beaten by a coat of paint

April 20, 2010 on 1:35 am | In MATCH REPORTS | Comments Off

Premier League Football South/West Men’s
Margaret River 0 v Bunbury United 2
By coach Gary Leigh
If a result ever gave a false account of a game, then this was one.

On paper this looks like a fairly comfortable win for Bunbury Utd, but what it doesn’t explain is how many times the River hit the “woodwork” and squandered some great chances of scoring.

In a fast and furious opening stage of this game Margaret River made most of the running in front of one of the biggest home crowds that I seen at our Western Oval footie ground.

The first time we hit the opponent’s crossbar was when Simon Corke (under pressure at right) in his first game back for FMR took a direct free-kick from all of 30 metres out, the ball struck the bar with enormous power, which ricocheted back into play for Bunbury to clear to safety.

Alex Costa then had a couple of shot’s from midfield the second of which struck the Bunbury goal keeper with great force and rebounded to Glenn Skyrme who was following up Alex’s shot, but he could not keep his shot down.

Then against the run of play Bunbury’s right sided midfielder found space on the edge of our penalty area and coolly placed the ball over John Malpas our keeper, to give Bunbury the advantage at half time, 0-1.

My main instruction at the break was to keep the ball on the ground when attacking, because of the height advantage the Bunbury defence had over our forwards.

Shogo Maida and Josiah Allington worked well down the left hand side of the pitch for River and opened the Bunbury defence on several occasions.

Then River were awarded another direct free-kick, Alex made deceptive run for Glenn (at right) to strike a beautiful curved shot which had all the crowd jumping for joy, but somehow the ball hit the inside of post where it meets the bar and deflected along the line to safety once again for Bunbury. “I think we need to put one less coat of paint on the goals next season”.

Bunbury where out of energy and River mounted wave attack after attack, Redar Saber made a scintillating run up the middle of the pitch leaving 4 or 5 Bunbury players in his wake, but River could still not find that equalizer they so deserved.

Kel Murray was having a fine game in River defence his speed and courageousness in his tackling is amazing, he wins our player of the match award, thanks to Neil Mattinson for sponsorship.

With only minutes of play left Bunbury broke free and beat our off side trap, their forward rounded John and placed the ball into net and broke the hearts of River and gave Bunbury an unassailable lead, 0-2.

The River can take a lot of positives away from this game; we competed in every area with last season league champions and can hold our heads high.

Our Reserves had a great 3-1 victory over Bunbury Utd. With Brad Tweedle grabbing 2 superb goals and Simon Corke netting from the penalty spot after Trevor Arenmer was failed.

[At left: Alex Costa.}

Harrison Wilson wins the Eagle Boys Pizza player of the match in his first game back the River; he is maturing into a wonderful player.

A special mention goes to Jack Constantine also one of our younger players for a great game in defence for the reserves. Jack received a facial injury in the previous game, he showed great courage in this match, well played.

Click images for bigger views. Images courtesy Ikon Design.