Reserves go down at Suburbs

14/5/11    Eastern Suburbs 3 Pukekohe 1 (HT 2 – 0) 

The Reserves travelled to Madills Farm Reserve last weekend to take on an Eastern Suburbs side who sat just one place below us on the ladder prior to the game.

In contrast to the previous few weeks, we actually had the luxury of naming two substitutes, young John Skinner making his reappearance after being out for a couple of weeks and Thomas Sutcliffe stepping up from the 4th team. (Thanks to Mike Botting for going out of his way to arrange that for us).

We began the game with what looked like a strong line up on paper but, unfortunately, football isn’t played on paper. It’s played on grass, and the excellent playing surface didn’t give us any excuses there. From the start, we looked sluggish and off the pace and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Suburbs were 2 up after 10 minutes. Giving away possession cheaply and sloppy defending coming back to bite us. Both sides had chances in the first half, Suburbs had a shot smack the crossbar and we had a number of good chances go begging, including a Richard Herangi header which was cleared off the line.

The 2nd half started in much the same way as the 1st, Suburbs were denied by a superb one handed save by Andy Townsend, before they found the net again to go 3 up.

Around the 70 minute mark we at last began to play the football we are capable of and it was basically one way traffic for the last 20, with Suburbs hanging on and launching the odd counter attack. We did manage to get one back via a superb finish from Matt Bent, playing his first game back after several weeks out through injury, and Suburbs were reduced to 10 men after one of their players received a second booking for stupidly kicking the ball away after the ref had correctly called him for being offside. Despite the pressure, and the advantage of having an extra man, we couldn’t find the net again and 3 – 1 was how it finished.

Disappointing would be the best way to describe the game. Not only the result, but our lacklustre performance for the majority of it. Eastern Suburbs weren’t a bad side, and credit to them for their victory, but they are a team I feel we could have beaten. Saturday confirmed that we definitely have some things to work on the training field and that will be addressed over the coming weeks. There were some individual good performances, but overall we didn’t show what we are capable of.

The loss means the Reserves now have 3 wins and 3 defeats from our 6 games so far.

This Saturday, the Reserves are back at Bledisloe with a home game against local rivals Tuakau, kicking off at 1 o’clock.