UPTON 3 - 5 ROCKETS
Our plan this morning and team selection was thrown into chaos when we turned up to find a postage stamp sized muddy pitch and we were playing 6v6.
Clearly it suited Upton who, as they did at our place, were well drilled in soaking up pressure and hitting forward balls, which due to the pitch size were never far away from the big lad up front. The conditions had the adverse effect on our lads who are used to much more space, width and time to play our passing game.
That said, for the first 30 minutes of this game only one team decided to tackle and Upton sailed into a 3-1 lead with just 10 minutes left to play. Out tackling in the first 30 minutes, apart from Fin, was very poor and all the lads struggled to clear the lines in the muddy conditions and small area. We had scored a goal from a decent Xander corner forcing an Upton own goal.
With 10 minutes left we talked about our epic comeback against Nomads. We agreed as a group that our performance so far had been unacceptable and that we'd all quite like to win the game!!
The final quarter was a very different story. Our body language, effort and tackling reached a different level and we were getting shots on target.
On 31 mins George finished a good move into the bottom right. 3-2...
On 31 mins 30s George finished a good move into the bottom left. 3-3...and getting interesting!
On 32 mins George pounced on a goal line scramble and got the ball over the line with his RIGHT foot. 3-4...and getting really interesting.
At 3-4 up we were suddenly winning every tackle and in particular Zac, Fin and William were setting the tone with some fair tackles and some crunching mistimed ones! Upton suddenly looked very much second best.
On 34 mins George got clear on the left and smashed one to the top right to score his fourth goal in 3 minutes which I am reliably informed must be a Chester and District record. His first three goals brought back memories of Robbie 'God' Fowler against Arsenal but by the time the fourth went in it was more like Ian Rush versus Everton (one for Steve Peers there!!).
We defended really well in the last quarter and even though 12 minutes of a 10 minute quarter were played we stuck it out to complete another famous comeback.
MOTM was between Fin and George but we couldn't ignore four goals at the Primary school George attends and against a lot of his mates. George will be Captain next week.
Well done to the lads to show the character required to haul themselves back, but we really didn't need to leave ourselves a mountain to climb!
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