Hilltop 8 - 7 Green Man

Pre-match organising ended up being a bit of a shambles for this game. Deano let us down and we didn't find out till 30mins before kickoff. Our poor kitty is now empty for the first time in many a season! ;(

With no Deano and Craig playing in goal (due to being knackered), we would need the whole team to step in with the goals and that they did! I think a few of us were expecting a rough game against Green Man but it was without incident really. Green Man like many of the younger teams, just tried to play quick attacking football and they dominated most of the game, with us trailing by 2-3 goals.

Come half-time, we were 3-5 behind (this is what the ref told me anyway!), although I was genuinely surprised to hear they lead by just 2 goals. There had been a few simple defensive lapses with people not tracking and pulling other men from their marker to cover, happened to me a lot in the first half! Anyway, apparently with only 2 goals behind, our team picked up spirits and we started knocking a few more in. Craig swopped positions with Burke who went in goal, he made some classy saves to basically keep us in the game the second half. Stimo's hattrick was made up of some quality play as well, they had a decent keeper but the shots kept flying in the corner.

Unfortunately Kev was injured about 10mins into the second half, putting us down to just 1 sub. However, our general fitness levels do seem to have improved, I can feel my own fitness getting better each week and David seems to be back to his marathon man self. The team eventually got to just 1 goal behind and we could sense more goals to come. Unfortunately the ref decided to add an extra goal onto Green Man, so we were behind by 2 again. I've no complaints about this as they did net a lot of goals, it's just a bit shit when the ref f#cks up like that, as it could have killed our morale.

Thankfully we scored near enough from the off, after the ball rebounded into the air and with two defenders around him, Ken managed to volley the ball into the back of the net.

Just 1 goal behind again and about 2 mins left.

Up steps David and we are level, their team must have been gutted. Everyone's a bit edgy at this point but their team had more to loose and although it was counter-attacking football for both teams, i would say we had them on the back foot at this point. With about 40 seconds left Craig scored the winner and after the celebrations we just tried our best to hold onto the ball until full time.

Full time came and we won! Another 3 points and our best start to the season since we finished 2nd. Each game has been tight without Graeme but it does feel like we are getting better and hopefully we can keep up the fight.

Goals: Burke (1), Craig (1), David (1), Ken (1), Ste (1), Stimo (3)
Team: Burke, Craig, David, Ken, Kev, Ste, Stimo