Lions Scrape Through To First League Point Of 2019

Two free kicks in the last two minutes saw the spoils shared in a game that had the Lions frustrated by a dogged goalkeeping and defensive display. Harry M kept his dead-ball scoring run going with another penalty won by Max and the last gasp free kick to earn the Lions a point.

Before the game we'd talked about changing things up, being more positive, done some passing and shooting practice beforehand with people arriving nice and early. Everyone really geared up for the game to try to turn our recent dismal form around.

So of course, straight from the kick off, they punt a long ball forward, Ed says no to one in particular "Yours" as it goes right past him and they nip through to score with barely 20 seconds on the clock.

Thankfully, we managed to save most of the arguments for later and got straight back at them. And frankly we battered them not just for the first half but most of the game too. Their keeper made some great saves throughout and their defence put in multiple blocks to keep their lead until half time.

They had a couple of chances in the first half to extend the lead,, one long range effort over the bar, the other a goal mouth scramble from a corner that was eventually gathered in by yours truly in goal.

Second half more of the same, us laying siege to their goal but they were starting to get in behind us a bit more often too. The new Harry in defence made a great last ditch tackle and both defences were now being stretched. We won a penalty when their defender was adjudged to have handled and (old) Harry dispatched it just out of reach of the diving goalie. It took a while to restart due to some rather unnecessary shenanigans involving players around the area, which the ref had to go to great lengths to calm down.

They did have the ball in the back of the net again but the attacker was ruled offside when one on one. A second one on one ended with the ball going out for a goal kick after a decent block by the keeper. Then we conceded a poor free kick on the edge of our area with two minutes to go to put us behind again.

The ball went low through the wall, taking multiple deflections on its way into the far corner. Bit of a sucker punch considering the chances we’d had but we had one last one when Max got blocked off at the edge of their area. Cue Harry's free kick that beat the keeper high into the top corner.

They did have one last punt straight from the restart but although it was on target, it was collected safely. We deserved all three points, but any halt to our recent rot is welcome right now. Now need to take this as some encouragement into the next set of games and get some wins on the board.