N.London Crickets 2 Gower 0
First defeat for the Gowers of the season. We were simply not at the races all day, and had a “bad day at the office”.
Against a team, that on an average day, we would have torn apart, the Gowers struggled to string their passes together, to create opportunities, and to win their 50-50s – all of which resulted in a disjointed, ugly performance.
We went one down, after 30 mins when a mix-up between Ossack and keeper Paley, led to the striker nipping in, and finishing off cleverly.
The second half Gowers pulled together a bit better, and created one or two nice moves, down the left with Stiefel and Duggan combining well.
Robin Street battled throughout the game in his usual tenacious manner, but to be honest, we had no potency upfront and looked uncharacterically out of sorts as a team on the day.
Paley made a fine save to keep it at 1-0 and was consistently dominant with his calling and communication – however, from a corner, a missed defensive header resulted in an easy near post tap in from 3 yards for Crickets – to go 2-0 with 10 mins to play.
A late rally from Gowers, came to no avail and the final whistle blew, leaving the team all but out of the Group Cup and somewhat amazed that we were capable of such an ordinary performance.
Overall boys, whilst not disastrous, the most important lesson to be learned from this game, is that whilst we really are the best team in our league, we really cannot afford to take any team lightly. Complacency can be a real problem. And we need to prove we are the best.
Right from the off, we need to out-battle and out-play our opponents, otherwise these teams are capable, as we’ve seen, of scoring and beating us. Lucky this was only a cup match.
Next week is Ultramarine at Regents Park in the league – we beat them 8-1 first match of the season, but more importantly, we must put in a performance, and get back on the winning track. One slip up and the other teams (Crown & Goose and London Tigers (yet to play them)) are right on our tails….
See you all Weds for a proper hard, high quality session please.
