Steve Cox posted on August 28, 2007 15:05
A tough quarter final draw put us at our league rivals, Eastern Suburbs, on Saturday 18th August. We knew it was going to be hard match especially as we had pipped Suburbs to the title by just one point two weeks earlier.
The game kicked off in dreadful conditions and the quality of the pitch did not help things. Both teams were eager to get off to a good start, with Suburbs being the brighter of the two teams (you could tell we hadn’t played football in two weeks!). After 25 minutes we found ourselves 1.0, a clean through ball split our defence and although Colin Pegg got a hand to it, the ball slid in to our dismay. We were struggling and we battled to the half time whistle only 1 goal down.
Things were not going our way, poor football, poor conditions and some poor refereeing decisions. Dave Wright, captain for the day, called the half time team talk. “Do we want at least one more game this season? Do we want to show that we are league champions?”. The call was to show more hunger, desire and to get ourselves sorted out (that was the polite version!).
The second half eventually saw some football being played, we started to believe and gain confidence. Then the equaliser arrived. Nick Rowe picked up the ball just inside the suburbs half from some neat work out of defence from the right back (guess who that was?), he looked up and thumped a shot towards goal which just dipped under the bar. What a goal and what a time to score it. Spirits were raised and the comeback was on.
The team worked hard for each other, tracking back and competing for the ball. Then a tactical change paid off midway through the second half. Jamie Pegg was left up front as a lone striker to let his pace worry a tired looking Suburbs defence. A superb through ball put Jamie through on a solo effort; his first shot was well stopped by the keeper but rebounded back to Jamie, who slotted home from a very tight angle. Then to our amazement the referee didn’t award the goal! However, thanks to some great sportsmanship from the Suburbs keeper, he admitted that the ball and gone in but out through the un-pegged side netting – 2-1. Within minutes Jamie had another through ball and breakaway, this time he planted a fine strike very calmly into the bottom right hand corner – 3-1. Suburbs heads went down and we reached the final whistle as 3-1 winners.
It, however, could have been a completely different story early in the second half had it not been for a fantastic double save by Colin Pegg, which duly earnt him Player of the Day. We had done it. We had reached the semi finals and proved worthy league winners. A great comeback and thanks to all the team and the support from the sidelines. A thank you to Eastern Suburbs for great sportsmanship shown during and after the game, which is sometimes lacking in our game today. We had answered the captain’s call.