Margaret River 3 Vs Eaton Town 1

May 24, 2010 on 3:46 am | In MATCH REPORTS | Comments Off

Men’s South/West Premier League
By coach Gary Leigh
Don’t rub your eyes; yes Margs had a home win, after trailing 1-0 a great fight back earned them a well deserved win.

Canadian Ted Brander captained the Margaret River team in his last appearance for the club after his two-year spell with us before heading home, he will always be a part of this club and I think Margaret River will always be part of him.

As in most of our previous league games this season we dominated from the kick-off and created several good chances to open the scoring.

The Eaton keeper made a couple of great saves from one-on-ones with Sam Parott and Alex Costa to keep the game scoreless to the disbelief of the vocal crowd at the break.

Eaton scored from a direct free-kick shortly after the re-start when the ball was allowed to bounce in our penalty area and we were punished, 0-1.

A change in formation, when River’s prolific goal scorer Glenn Skyrme was introduced into the game to give our attack three forwards in an attempt to claw our way back into the game.

This formation also gave Lee Gaynor, in his first game back for the River since last season, more room on the right wing to attack the Eaton defence.

But the equalizer came from another source, when Simon Corke in midfield hit a wonderful strike along the ground from all of 25 metres out from goal, leaving the Eaton keeper sprawling on the ground in a vain attempt to stop the shot, 1-1.

River were now back in control of the game and a second goal seemed likely, what we hadn’t bargained for was a double sending off, when Alex and an Eaton defender got their marching orders, in what, up until then had been a fairly incident free and fair game.

This setback only spurred the River on, with 20 minutes remaining Lee controlled and turned, his shot finding the back of Eaton’s net form the edge of the penalty area, 2-1.

It was now Eaton’s turn to pile on the pressure, Redar Saber and Kel Murray both tackled like their lives depended upon it, but unlike previous weeks our defence held strong.

Our keeper John Malpas was required to make a couple of saves near the end.

But with the game just about over Sam and substitute Gordon Becker combined well, which produced a fine chip over a defender for that man Glenn to notch another goal for the River and seal a long awaited win at home, 3-1.

It’s great to get that monkey off our backs, maybe now we can go on with this and finish teams off, which we have deserved to, on so many past occasions.

Player of the match was a close run thing again, with Simon just edging out Ted and Josiah Allington for the award.

The reserves went down fighting in another high scoring game this season 5-4.

Player of the match was Jack Constantine.

River’s next home match is next week against top of the table Busselton in a league match.