Lost 2-9
Scorers: John Aikin, Kai Griffin
MoM: Joran Kearney
DoD: Not awarded though 2 cards were…..!
With thanks to team sponsor MFri
Off we went minus Jonesy who was treading the boards in Ash but two new debutantes – George Pound and young keeper Joran Kearney with Kai Griffin only having played once before for us. This was going to be a difficult game; Holcombe had bought 15 and a manager with a clipboard (always worrying) – and we had a manager (The Great Phil Dowling – for it is he) without a clipboard. They looked and indeed were a physical and fast team and indeed within five minutes they were goal ahead from a drag penalty dude – rare as hen’s teeth in our league. He was obviously using today’s game as practice as by the end he popped in 4 drags however we are getting ahead of ourselves which doesn’t happen often on the right wing these days. However still in the first half the Friars withstood the tide and began to defend and pass quite well resulting in a speedy run down the right from Kai to John Boy Aiken who swept it most stylishly into the goal. 10 minutes later the score was equalised, this time by Kai Griffin who from open play shot very cleanly into goal and that is how it remained at halftime.
Stirring words from a few in the bunker all summed up neatly by the Boss – “just pass to a green shirt” he sensibly said. However upon stony ground those words of wisdom fell.
And that’s it apart from The Friars running out of gas, seven Holcombe goals, a green deja vu card for Merv, a matching fashion accessory in the form of a yellow card to our very own Councillor and a broken collarbone for poor Merv sustained in the 69th minute who as usual ran his socks off. He survives in pain but he can’t now add to his expanding collection of cards for this season.
Despite the score young Joran in goal kept out several and displayed considerable courage in the face of the barrage of drag shots from Holcombe’s no 151 who seemed to have found himself in the wrong team.
Thanks very much to Phil and Tyler Aitken for their expert umpiring and who both umpired multiple games on Saturday.