YDS slump to narrow defeat at 3 Kings

It is a good job I had a night's sleep before writing this article. First and foremost, my apologises to those supporters who came down to watch our game against 3 Kings Sea Cows at Keith Hay Park. I had a bad feeling all day after watching England's shocking performance earlier and it came back for our match.

Arriving at Kings, once again we found there was no referee available and so I had to step into the middle. On paper we had a strong YDS team, supplemented by Charlie Heather on the bench in case of problems. The weather was dry with a good breeze to start and with the pitch a little heavy particularly in the centre and both goal mouths. Watching our warm up brought an odd feeling that the lads were just going through the motions and it was confirmed when I heard Grant bringing that point up with them as I passed.

Allowing Kings to kick off, we immediately started to pressure them and quickly won possession. However, from that moment and for the first 10 minutes, we were abysmal!! Miss-passing from 5 metres, giving the ball away and running around like headless chickens and to be honest, looking like a group of individuals who had turned up for a kick about!! What was more annoying was the fact that as the ref, I could not coach the lads or advise, and would have to wait until half time before I did so. Instead I restricted myself to informing our captain of my displeasure and that I wanted to see improvement and quickly! Having done that, we did start to put some passes together and with Dave Nutt trying to guide the players from midfield, we actually put a lovely flowing series of 5-6 passes together, culminating in a short that just flew wide. Other than that, the first half was mainly forgettable except for 2 moments. Firstly, we lost Levin as he went over on his ankle (Warned him about wearing pink boots!) and second was a missed opportunity at a dangerous free kick. We won a direct free kick on the edge of the area. However, as we patiently waited for the Kings defence to put a wall up and site their keeper, Waiuku had not asked for 10 yards and were free to take the kick whenever they wished. We had the goal wide open with the Kings defence looking the wrong way and their keeper siting his wall on the far right of his goal, yet we waited until he was ready. As the Ref AND Coach it was so frustrating as I wanted to tell our player to shoot, but I could not and the chance went begging. It is amazing how many players are not aware of this?

Half-time and I will be honest, I did not hold back on the lads. We knew we were playing extremely badly by our standards and improvement was needed. Kicking off for the second half, we actually tried to play better football, but there was still that lack of cohesion but at least the effort was coming back. For now! The game was ours for the winning as Stuart, in goal, had hardly had a save to make and we seemed to be doing all the attacking. However, despite numerous 'soft' shots and goal mouth melees, we just could not find the net.  Enter Dylan Thompson. Dylan seemed to spark a revival up front and we looked more threatening. Then as yet another goal mouth scramble ensured, he was handily placed to curl the ball beyond the dive of the Kings keeper and we were 1-0 up!!  Great I thought. We would now calm down and go on to win comfortably! How wrong I was! Despite now having the advantage, we went straight back to our 1st half performance and fell asleep. Players found themselves well out of position and unable to tackle and within a few minutes, we paid the price as we allowed the Kings' left winger all the space and time he needed to run down our right, cut in, advance and score past Stuart! 1-1! Worse was to come as we looked jaded and well off the pace with 15 minutes to go. A poor attempt at a clearance from our defence was struck towards Grant, whose arm moved up and I had no choice to award a penalty!  Despite Stuarts' best efforts in which he only just missed the ball, we found ourselves 1-2 down. From that moment, the rest of the game was forgettable and it ended 1-2. The lads know they let themselves down and it was a harsh lesson, but football is a funny old game as the say! Choosing a Man of the Match, I have opted for Dylan Thompson for his energy and determination, not to mention his goal!

Our next game is at home on Saturday against another 3 Kings Team. We are due to play ahead of the 1st team on Massey Park, with a 1pm KO.