Liquid Football At Times

In the first 10 mins, the opposition looked very poor. We relaxed quite a bit and played some really sexy football. Gabe had a couple of earlier chances from nice bits of team work. I had a chance, but got the ball caught under my feet instead of doing a goal. But the goal came from a long throw flicked on by Rennie and nodded home by Foster at the back post. Their keeper pulled his hamstring and it looked like it was going to be a rout. I ran through and was brought down in the box, but I sportingly popped it over the bar to give them a bit of hope. Portland had 1 chance to speak of; a mix up at the back left them with the ball on the edge of the box to just loft into an empty net, but he pulled it wide. A warning. But we looked stronger and stronger as the half went on and almost scored from another lovely bit of one touch football just before half time.

Second half started like the first finished, knocking the ball around nicely. Another nice passing move found Hendricks down the line, he fizzed a ball along the floor into the box for Gabe to tuck away neatly. 2-0 and surely a few more to come from a beaten Portland? They had other ideas. They rallied well and got a well taken goal shortly after our second. The rest of the half was fairly ugly football, we stopped playing the sexy stuff. The overloaded in midfield, which we contained well enough for the most part. On the rare occasion they got a cross in, it found an unmarked Portland head, but he nodded wide. Nerves started to set in and we started to panic our clearances. Portland started getting desperate; they were whining at the ref a lot and fouling a lot. We should have taken more advantage of this and absorbed some fouls. We needed to keep possession a bit more to frustrate them, but we held out in the end.