Actonians 5s vs Merton 3s

Its was an early start for the Boars match day squad as they journeyed to outer reaches of Central line in search of victory.

Having impressed in the previous weeks away victory against Wilsonians confidence was high that another positive result was achievable, the usual incoming and outgoing of players meant that 7 different players appeared on the team sheet from the previous week.
Coming in for their first 3s game of the year were Tom Johnson, Dan Peace and Peter Quainton, they were joined by merton veteran Mike ‘Mustard” Reed and Mike “Stoney” Stone.

Impressively most turned up in good time to listen to their choice of 90’s dance music blasted out by DJ Mustard, although there seemed to be a very broad definition of what dance music actually is, as evidenced by Michael Jackson gracing the nominations.

A short warm up was undertaken and with a decent pitch and reasonably benign atmospheric conditions in effect the scene was set for a decent game of football. Before getting underway a minutes silence was observed for the passing of a member of Actonians.

First Half –

Once underway Merton took a strong grip of proceedings getting the ball down and making some good off the ball runs to open up space in the Actonians final third, the only thing that was missing was the final bit of quality. However it was the home team that took the lead with there first meaningful chance, the ball was launched down field by the Goalkeeper and was misjudged by both centre halves which allowed the centre forward to collect the ball and somehow scuff the shot into the boars net, 1-0.
The setback did not deter the Boars from continuing to play the ball around with the same level of control as before, both full backs and wide midfielders were working well together to keep up the pressure on the home team defence and it was not long before the equaliser arrived. Following more good work down the right Gabby found enough time to put in a quality cross to the far post were it was impressively finished by Dan Peace 1-1. Parity did not last long however as from a corner won shortly afterward actonians retook the lead after the boars failed to clear the ball adequately, the ball falling to an opposition player who had time to bring the ball down and in a crowded penalty area find the net past an unsighted keeper, 2-1. Things then got worse for the boars as the third goal opposition goal followed shortly afterwards, this time the Merton defence could not deal with a free kick into the centre of the box and again the ball feel kindly for an Actonians player to force the ball past the dive of the boars keeper, 3-1.

Second Half –

Although two goals behind it had been a reasonable performance from the boars, the start of the half passed without much incident but that was soon to change, after what can only be described as a terrible tackle Actonians were reduced to 10 men with about 25 minutes left on the clock. Within 10 mins of having the numerical advantage the boars had a goal back, good work from Aaron down the right culminated in a great cross to the back post where Sam Spiers had timed his run to perfection to meet it, 3-2.
Unfortunately Merton could not make any further headway, shots where off target and good positions wasted. The nail in the coffin was when the home side won there only corner of the second half and promptly scored, the boars failing to mark tightly enough to stop the striker meeting a low ball into the box first and squeezing it past the keeper.

Final score Actonians 4 – Merton 2

A disappointing result given some of the football that we played and the standard of the opposition,  but it shows that if you don’t do the basics right you get punished.

Merton Squad- Iain Evans, Mike Reed, Peter Quaiton, Tom johnson, Ryan Burchell, Gabriel Draghici, Mike Stone, Neal Davison, Sam Kapadia, Dan Peace, Aaron Byrne, Sam Spiers and Nathan Harris

Posted in Match Reports 3s