Key Sports Elite 1 Moor Mead Athletic 4
A combination of weddings, school sports and even a trip to Sweden meant that we could only field the bare 9 players today and they played with style to record our first league win of the season.
It wasn’t looking good at 0-0 when the referee wouldn’t let Roshan continue until we found him some shin pads but after a brief stop we retrieved some from the back of Brendan’s car. The suggestion that Roshan owed the coaches two goals as a result proved quite prophetic!
The first half was pretty even but Athletic had the lion’s share of the chances and when Sam was fouled in the penalty box, Roshan stepped up to fire Athletic ahead. But KSE equalised soon after and it was 1-1 at half-time.
Athletic started the second half in the same vein. With Nico looking assured in goal, the defence of Alex, Brendan and Marcus held firm and the midfield four (Finn, Roshan, Sam and Dan) and Nathan upfront created chance after chance. With Coach Chris watching the team for the first time he’ll have made a mental note to practice close control and dribbling when closing in on goal… how many times did we push the ball too far forward only for the goalkeeper to collect?
It looked as if we would rue those missed chances but then Sam broke free down the right and squared the ball for Nathan to score. Shortly after, Nathan scored again with a very composed finish and then Roshan wrapped up a convincing win with his second goal – and paid the coaches back for his shin-pad misdemeanour!
That’s three wins on the spin for Athletic and they can go in to next week’s cup quarter-final full of confidence.