Bunbury United 1 v Margaret River 2

July 26, 2010 on 3:56 am | In MATCH REPORTS | Comments Off

Men’s South West Premier League
By Coach Gary Leigh
You know what you are up against when you enter the Bunbury Club rooms and see all the championship flags upon the walls. Its impressive if not to say a bit intimidating for the away club.

With the wind behind us the River started the stronger and quickly got into their free flowing passing game and looked the more likely to score.

We deserved a goal and we got it after 15 minutes from a set play, when Jon Richards curled a corner kick straight into the Bunbury goal, with a Bunbury defender back tracking, he could only help the ball over the line, heading up onto his crossbar but the ball had already crossed the line, 1-0.

The River was hungry for more goals and took the game further to United.

Lee Gaynor and Alex Costa where combining well, dissecting the Bunbury defence on many occasions giving Glenn Skyrme and Danny Kaleta goal scoring chances to extend our advantage.

A cross into the Bunbury penalty area was only cleared 20 meters out from goal, which Redar Saber latched onto first time and smashed the ball into Bunbury net to put the River two goals up at the break.

As I told the team in my half time talk, a two goal lead can often give a team a false sense of security, we have either got to extend our lead further or soak up the pressure early on and hit them on the counter attack.

We took to the field and attempted to continue has we had played the first half, but United had stepped up a gear and where winning most midfield battles.

A couple of positional changes were introduced in the attempt to keep our two goal lead and hit them on the break, which nearly came off when both Ned Allington and Richards went close to extending our lead.

Johnny Malpas was called upon to make a couple of saves but could do nothing about a shot that rebounded off the goal post back into the path of an oncoming Bunbury attacker, who made no mistake from 6 meters out, with 10 minutes remaining, 2-1.

The River defence held firm with both full backs Sam Parrott and Gordon Becker defusing any further Bunbury forays into the River’s half.

Brad Tweddle put his 65 kg –ringing wet- body on the line with a crunching tackle in the dying moments of this game that summed up the attitude of the entire FMR squad this day.

I could not separate Lee or Redar who both had great games and share the Player of the Match Award.

A special mention must be made to all the reserves team players for the River; with out whom this league win could not have been possible.

Thursday night after training our squad looked to have no more than 16 players for both teams, meaning a least 6 players having to play two games.

The likes of Harrison Wilson playing with an injury and Scott Guthie-Phelps playing on his way home from the airport all helped to secure this win and does not go unnoticed.

The reserves went down 4-2 in a closely contended game, Ned Allington winning the Player of the Match.

Next Sunday we are away again this time in Balingup, playing Blackwood in the second round of the Pioneer Cup.