The 3rds second outing of the season was against Old Reigatians in the cup, after an opening day 3-1 reversal at Polytechnic our thoughts turned to the road to Wembley ( or whatever the cup final equivalent is for us)

After a bit of crack filling and so classic noughties tracks the game kicked off.

In the early exchanges the boars got the ball down and produced a few neat interchanges but never quite found the cutting edge once in the final third and the first 20 passed with reasonably quietly. That all changed at about the mid point of the first half.

From our own goal kick the ball was given away and with players out of position it only took a couple of passes for Reigatians to fashion a decent opening and put the ball past Ryan Collier in the Merton goal.

Within 5 minutes it was 0-2, the balm was turned over half way inside the opposition half but with far to many men in advanced positions it was fairly straight forward for the opposition to again threaten the home goal. This lead to a shot from the away side that was destined for the goalkeepers arm to be deflected agonisingly past the stranded Ryan C by Joe Vaughan. So at half time the boars trailed 0-2

The second half kicked off and thing pretty quickly went from bad to worse.

From an opposition corner Neal Davison inexplicably decided to produce his best Maradona impression, the eagle eyed ref awarding the spot kick much to the ire of Diego Davison who claimed to have been “pushed”. The penalty was promptly dispatched making the score 0-3.

At that point a little tactical tinkering from the gaffer and his cohort of technical advisors on the side line seemed to do the trick as the boars maintained some decent possession but again the lack of quality in the final third meant all our endeavours came to nought. The best opportunity falling to Joe Vaughan who finding himself in the middle of the box and with time to pick his spot proceeded to essentially pass the ball back to the keeper. With the game becoming more stretched Reigatians broke down field and were awarded a second spot kick when Iain Evans was harshly adjudged to have unlawfully stopped the attacker in the penalty area, after the game the challenge would be compared to a WWE wrestling move!

Again the penalty was converted and so ended the 3’s involvement in the SFA cup for another year.

MoM – Vin
DoD – Iain

Posted in Match Reports 3s