Island Bay United AFC

On the Queens Birthday, while she was sipping high tea and giggling at a re-run of Coronation Street, we were freezing our bits off chasing a few bits of stitched together leather around a paddock.

Wakefield Number 1 looked like it had been used by the NZ Army for Tank Wars, so the match was transfered all the way over to Brooklyn's home ground, Wakefield Number 2. Ahhhhhh, much better............;p

We'd sat inside our nice cosy changing room, and convinced each other that today we weren't going to let ourselves down, do the simple things well, play decent football and then turn the confidence we'd regained from keeping hold of the ball into decent goal scoring opportunities. We had also committed to doing this as soon as the first whistle went.

I've decided upon reflection that it must have been too windy to hear the first whistle, as we actually started in panic mode, giving away far too much ball, and then inside of 20 minutes, one bad ball at the back led to another, and the nippy striker dispossessed our centre back, tootled around Plowright in goal, and toed it into an empty net. Did I say he was fast? He was so fast, the rest of their team had to run twice as fast just to keep up with him!

True to form, after conceding, we settled down nicely, and at some moments looked dangerous with ball at feet and some nice crisp passing movements. Unfortunately our shots were not on target and yours truely blazed a golden op over the bar, so the half ended with us still down 1-0.

A bit of a re-iteration in what was wanted and needed at halftime, and we were back out into the balmy weather to try and turn things around.

The first 20 minutes weren't much to write home about, with few good scoring opportunites from either side, but after Dave Plowright stopped a one on one shot and held it while right out at the edge of his box, we seemed to wake up a little.

Kapiti seemed to be content with the one goal, and let us bring the game to them. I must say I am amazingly proud of the way Island Bay can play when we want to, and in the last 25 minutes, we really turned up the pressure, forcing Kapiti to throw themselves at everything, resulting in the Ref whipping out his little yellow card like he was an Action Man "with authentic wrist action".

We hit the crossbar, sent the ball just wide, and then a handball in the box ended with a penalty (almost just like the one we should have had against Karori, except in the Ref's line of sight) and Steelo tucked it in to bring us level.

We wanted the whole 3 points, and unfortunately as someone once said, "we didn't lose, we just ran out of time." In almost the last kick of the game, Scott Clayton spun his man and curled a shot across the goal. The Keeper disturbed the air flow around the ball with his flapping glove (i.e - the absolute faintest of touches), which sent the ball onto the bar, and richocheting back into the flying David Rutherford (who knew nothing about it) before bobbling inches wide of the net, and 2 more, much needed, points.

The game ended a 1-1 draw, which annoyed the writer no end, because he alone should have "Bulged the 'ol onion bag" 3 times. Maybe next week.

The start of the second round sees us hosting Tawa, and we hope to build on our last 25 minutes of the last round, and begin winning again.

Shark Attack!

Labels: drew, home, kapiti, premier