Make It Make Sense
After Hours 1 GPR 1
They say that a man in love can’t feel an ounce of pain. Sadly, 10 minutes in our recently engaged midfielder Ant dislocated his shoulder and put an end to the theory claiming he was, in fact, in a lot of it. Wishing you well, mate. And the rest of the lads shared his pain after a game of dubious quality that was dominated by the whistle.
If we’re being completely honest, it was a pretty low quality game without much to split the two sides, although it was helped by a few strange decisions from the referee. Fouls were dismissed, good tackles punished, and a heap of offside calls given that made very little sense. It started with several runs in the back by Rory and Matty, but aided with some good defending on and off the pitch the game became very stop-start. The first half crawled to a close with one or two good chances apiece, but both keepers were up to the standard today. Some brilliant running from Rory set Matty up for a brilliant chance, only for the keeper to get a hand to it on the line.
The second half showed that both sides need to bolster their strength and conditioning ahead of a tough year, but crucially we were solid defensively and attacked well, creating chance after chance courtesy of our forward players. A defensive mistake allowed Matty to drive into the opponents box and square to Prince, whose touch may have been the only poor moment of his game, giving their onrushing player enough time to make an impressive recovery. All of our forward players were presented with opportunities, but finally, a botched clearance played Marcus in for a classic poacher’s strike to get him off the mark after 18 months of injury - the performance indicative that he will have many more yet to come.
After this, the flagging really did go crazy. Marcus, having held up the ball close to the touchline hit the defender’s hand square on and the whistle blew for the penalty. Oh wait, he was adjudged to have carried it out of play despite the referee admitting ‘he didn’t actually see it’. Minutes later, a fantastic ball from the opposing number 10 sent their wing back through on goal for what was legitimately the first offside flagging of the game not given. The truth is, tempters flared a bit afterwards and the game descended. We have a fine list this season now (how exciting) and Rory couldn’t resist the opportunity in bagging another achievement, as he was sent off by the ref to claim the position of first victim.
It was a pretty rubbish game to finish pre-season and certain decisions completely ruined the flow of play. That said, I don’t want to sound bitter - it’s a friendly at the end of the day and we wish After Hours best of luck ahead of their inaugural season. David is still improving weekly, Prince’s finishing was the only snag amid an excellent performance in both attack and defence. Greg made some excellent stops from distance, it was great to see Marcus in black and blue, and once the back line got going they looked imperious at times (also very anti-imperious but we’ll move on from that).
MOTM 🤌 = Jack Bodkin got the vote for his incredibly solid defending. Phizz withdrew from consideration, stating ‘this just my levels’. Okay pal.
DOTD 💀 = A lot of good candidates for this one, so Prince’s open goal miss is probably spared this time. I can’t be bothered to write the offside rule or people might start to think that we’re the problem…
