Island Bay United AFC

The start of the second round meant we played Lower Hutt out at Fraser Park, in what we hoped was going to be a continuation of our winning ways and the start of us winning away from home, which we had failed to do in the first round, coming away with three draws and a loss.

We were a little unstable to begin with, the ball wasn't sitting right, the passes weren't flowing and we didn't seem to have much spring in our steps, but that all changed when we started putting interlinking passes together in dangerous areas, overpowering the Lower Hutt defence and getting in behind, around and through them at almost every opportunity.

The First half romp was started by Benn sliding the ball past the stalled keeper, then Hicham scored twice (once from the Spot) Zac scored again with his head, and then Benn got his brace before the 45 minutes was up. Lower Hutt did score through a corner when a Lower Hutt player "helped" the ball on towards the far post using Maradona's famous "Hand of god" technique for an unmarked player to head home, but in reality we had them dead and buried at the half time whistle.

The referee's disappeared for a quick tea break, only to come back after half an hour (so we can assume they had scones aswell) and restarted the match. Lower Hutt's frustration was showing more and more, with tackles becoming more focused on players than the ball, and as is always the case with being up by lots of goals at half time, the whole Island Bay team decided to play as individuals and get themselves on the score sheet aswell. Naturally neither of this was good for our football, and our game degraded dramatically.

So dramatically in fact that Lower Hutt won the second half 1-0, one of their players finally finishing off after we'de made two or three poor clearance attempts inside our box.

Although our second half performance was poor, and lacked any enthusiam or passion whatsoever, our first half performance was great. We got our first win away from home, and as Tawa were turned over by Upper Hutt 2-1, we now sit perched on top of the table with 21 points from a possible 30 [though Tawa 19 and Wairarapa 18 have a game in hand each].

This weekend we play Marist at home where we'll look to improve on our 1-1 draw with them in the last round, and keep our noses in front at the top of the league ladder.

Go Sharks!

Labels: away, lower hutt, premier, won