Saturday, March 24, 2007
4-3 victory in a cliffhanger of a match
Proirswood took us by surprise with a strong start. The match was barely started when they took the lead. We were just recovering from that shock when they slipped in a second goal. Our defence was a little loose with their marking and goalie Zhudi had no chance to save either goal.
I was delighted to see that we did not get disheartened by this early set back. Andy and Cathal sorted out their marking and there was no more easy shots given away. Robert, Omar and Nado began to dominate the mid-field and sent several good balls in to Niamh in the forwards.
The pressure eventually paid off when Nado opened the scoring for us. Niamh forced the Priorswood goalie to make a few excellent saves, before Nado managed to get in for a second goal to level the scores. Castleknock continued to attack strongly for the rest of the first half. During one attack several players had shots saved, before Nado finally managed to get a dramatic header into the upper corner of the net to complete his hat trick and give us the lead at half time.
In the second half, today's captain Cathal took over the goal keeping duties which gave Zhhudi a chance to join David in attack, while Frank and Colin came in to take over the defending duties. For most of the second half it looked likely that our one goal lead might be enough to see us through, but Priorswood had other ideas and scored an equaliser with about 5 minutes to go.
Most of the spectators were expecting the match to go into extra time, but Nado our hat trick hero was not happy to give in and he kept attacking and managed to score a fourth goal in the last minute of the game, to set a new scoring record for our team.
This was a great team effort overall with every one of the players doing their bit. It was difficult to decide who would get the man-of-the-match award, but eventually we decided that Robert deserved credit for a hugely improved display.
