Mens H 3-0 HKU...Bright Start to NY

HKFC H 3 - 0 HKU, 5 Jan 2010 – A Bright Start to the New Year.

We knew that HKU were going to flood their own D and try and catch us on the break.  A sweetly struck effort from a short corner by Brett Goebel gave us an early lead that I thought would force HKU to be more adventurous.  However, HKU continued to pack their defence, played a lone striker upfront and essentially crossed their fingers that our defenders might make a mistake.

After the early goal, the rest of the first half was played at a snail’s pace and it wasn’t pretty for the neutral spectators.  We over-hit the ball – so much so that when four or five chances to score did arise, our strikers were unable to make any quality contact with the ball to direct it towards the net.  The hit and trap part of the game was letting us down.

Towards the end of the first half, with boredom setting in on a cold and wet evening, our defence were nearly caught napping on a couple of occasions only to be spared blushes by some poor finishing and Cyrus Law’s left foot.

A focused half-time teamtalk led to us adopting our more accustomed compact formation in the second half.  Then 2010 really kick-started for us.

The urgency returned to our game and we proceeded to push, dribble and flick our way around the largely static opposition, who could not get out of their own half.  Time after time, our jab tackling was breaking down the opposition at the halfway line from where we launched wave after wave of attacks.

The half-court press was constant.  A weak HKU clearance trickled out to Julian Gooding just inside their half and, with the minimum of fuss and laser-like precision, he pushed the ball vertically into the D to David Lloyd, who promptly smacked it through the goalie’s pads and into the net.

The 2-0 scoreline forced HKU to throw another couple of bodies forward.  The game opened up, as all our forwards were also eager to get on the scoresheet in the knowledge that we were outclassing HKU.  Brett rifled a bullet in the net again, but had this effort disallowed by an umpire’s whistle that blew for a short corner a split second before he let fly.  Succeeding where the forwards were struggling, Andy Dale finished off the scoring (capping a very hard-working performance) when he tapped-in Tim Loh’s mis-hit sweep shot into an empty net.

The match boiled over a few times when both Lloydy and Brett were subjected to some dubious challenges.  Lloydy was firstly tripped up and then hacked around the knees.  Then Brett mysteriously got penalised for receiving an elbow in his face, after which the opposition player got a typical Queensland verbal-bashing. 

Last but not least, it needs mentioning that Paul McGuire really needed his Scouse sense of humour in the Sportsman’s Bar afterwards to survive the ribbing he received from the rest of us for the open goal that he contrived to miss.  It’s already on its way into folklore.  There must have been at least three re-enactments at the bar.  Just for that, he was a deserved winner of this week’s Man of the Match poll from all the players.  Even if, technically speaking, he shouldn’t have been the man of the match, he was definitely our man of the evening.

Cheers,