Western Springs Wanderers   5     Pukekohe  0  (HT  3 - 0)

Team: Jamie Clarke, Jay Presnall (Ari Kloeten), Karl Straker, Matt Greene, Geoff Dodd, Graham Spinks (Chris Mahoney), Clive Mendham, Andy Bond, Jimmy Peckett (Adam Moorhouse), Keegan Saville, Tony Wisnewski

The return of the Reserve team match report! It’s a bit like the old bloke who sits at the end of the bar. You’ve never spoken to him, just a nod of recognition, but you notice when he’s not there. It gives you something to read at morning tea time, if nothing else.

My duties with the 1^st team have meant that it’s been impossible for me to provide you with the hard-hitting, fact-filled reports you know and love (Yeah, right) for a while now but, with the 1^st team having the bye this weekend, I was able to spend 90 minutes watching the Reserves for the first time in ages. Unfortunately!

To say the Reserve team’s season has hit a few speed bumps is a bit like saying George Best likes the occasional dry sherry or that Paris Hilton is a friendly lass! The reasonable start to the 2008 campaign has come seriously off the rails over the past weeks and Saturday’s result meant the team have now lost their last 5 in a row. To put Saturday’s result into perspective, the previous 3 meetings between the sides had produced a 0 – 0 draw, a 0 – 1 defeat courtesy of a late penalty and a 1 – 1 draw. Given that history, I was expecting Saturday’s contest to be rather tighter than it proved to be.

There were changes from the team which blew a 2 – 0 lead the previous week. Seksit Techo, Montri Techo, Scott Kerr and Matt Stewart were absent from the squad, for various reasons, while Chris Mahoney and Adam Moorhouse started the game on the bench. The starting line-up was bolstered by Keegan Saville and Jay Presnall from the 1^st team squad with Andy Bond and Tony Wisnewski making their reappearances in Puke colours after some time out.

Unfortunately, Jay’s journey into the murky depths of Div 3 ended up with him leaving the field with a pulled hamstring early in the 1^st half, allowing young Ari Kloeten to make his Reserve team debut.

For no other reason than to spare me the misery and anguish it would cause me to think about it, I will gloss over large chunks of our performance. When the opposition were in possession, we were looser than a flat pack sideboard. The day was best summed up by Wanderer’s second goal, a corner was cleared to the edge of the box and as the WS players played ‘scissors, rock, paper’ to decide which one of them would nod the ball back into the net, our entire team gazed on in admiration. Personally, I would have preferred that at least one of our lads had attacked the ball, but that was an option which seemed to have been forgotten about.

We did make chances and did play some decent football in spells but, overall, we looked lethargic and well off the pace. Not the best performance I have ever witnessed from our Reserve team. Not the worst, but definitely in the top five.

There were good individual performances. Tony Wisnewski and Keegan Saville worked hard up front, and on another day could both have been on the score sheet. Ari did enough to show that he has the makings of a very good player and Matt Greene didn’t do a lot wrong. The problem was that there were good individual performances but, in terms of a team performance, it wasn’t very good at all. Things seem to have gone into reverse from earlier in the season when we were grinding out wins as a team.

To be honest, I do feel that my responsibilities with the first team have, maybe unsurprisingly, coincided with the run of bad results which the Reserves are having. This is not something I feel particularly overjoyed about and, rest assured, I will be making every effort to devote the time and effort to Reserve team training sessions to try and get us back on track again. .

Finally, I can’t really finish the report without mentioning the standard of officiating. As a referee myself, I am hesitant to criticise anyone who takes the whistle in a football match, particularly when the "official" in question is not appointed by the AFF, but is plucked for the crowd or the substitutes bench. However, I can’t let Saturday’s ‘efforts’ go without some comment. On Saturday, Keegan was subjected to a physical battering from first whistle to last, without any protection from either of the 2 "referees" which the home club provided. Tony Wisnewski was another who can testify to the "physical" approach of some of the WS defenders. One WS midfield player in particular was allowed to indulge in his obvious passion for kicking people in off-the ball incidents without a word of reproach. I was informed that this was because "he’s old and he gets frustrated". My reply was "If he carries on like that when you’re 3 – 0 up, what does he do when you’re losing? Stab someone?"

The fact that our second half official was sporting a jacket and sunglasses for the entire 45 minutes speaks volumes. Don’t get me wrong, Western Springs fully deserved their win, the referee didn’t score any of the goals and our performance got the result it deserved, but I would have thought that a club as big as Western Springs would have had at least one Club Based Referee to call on.

Anyway, as Porky Pig would say………That’s All Folks. Next week Western Springs Steamboats come to Bledisloe. Kick-off at 1.00.

Man of the Match: Tony Wisnewski.

* The title is a line from a song by The Smiths. Those who are aware of the work of this great band will know what I'm getting at!