Kariong vs Barnstoneworth B South Match Report

A “nothing” game with nothing at stake – both sides locked into 3rd and 4th position regardless of what happened on this pitch or any other in our comp.

The focus of our pre-match talk was all about next week: “No reds and no injuries!!”. This was still a match we wanted to win with a good psychological advantage up for grabs going into week one of the final series.

It started off positively when Jules put us 1-0 up after about 10 minutes, but was all down hill from there. We survived a close penalty shout shortly afterwards – the ref put the whistle in his mouth then decided not to blow it. We weren’t so lucky about 5 minutes later when he awarded the “square up” for “God only knows what”. Kariong, who’s entire game plan revolves around a player going down in the box, were for once as surprised as everyone else. They converted the penalty to
level up at 1-1.

A short time later it was more of the same with their central striker locking arms with our centre back, bringing him down while screaming for a foul. The ref obliged and gave them another crack, this time from just outside the box. To the refs credit he conceded he got this one wrong and would try to watch more closely in future – a somewhat difficult assignment when controlling the entire match from the centre circle – Thanks champ!! A nicely struck free kick curled to the right of our wall and into the goal for their halftime lead.

The second half was pretty uneventful. We hit the cross bar a couple of times, hit the post, but just couldn’t manage to convert one of the many opportunities. The match ended with the score still at 1-2 to the bad guys. Kariong seem to know how to get under our skin and our footy suffers – we will need to be better next Saturday. While It’s hard to be “up” for a game where there’s essentially nothing to play for, a shout out is in order for Brett, Ant and Jono who put in solid efforts in a pretty lacklustre team display.

Goals: Jules

CW

Final Score: Kariong 2 – 1 Barnstoneworth