Another hot Sydney afternoon, greeted us at
Belmore Sports Ground for our Friday Afternoon clash with Hakoah. It looked
like it would be another difficult match for the players, who were playing in
their 3rd mid-30’s degrees match in a row, as well as coming off a
shorter turnaround.
As a result of maybe this, we were slow out of the blocks for this one and
Hakoah seemed to get the jump on us in the first 10 or so minutes and even had
a sneaky chance to take the lead before it was snuffed out. It was an up and down
first-half of football from Sydney Olympic. We looked OK when passing the ball
around, but in actual attacking situations we looked clunky, there was too much
dilly-dallying with the ball when a quick early pass or cross would have done
the trick and would have created huge problems for the opposition. In defensive
terms we also looked fairly shaky. On a few occasions, our defense failed to
deal with Hakoah’s long balls adequately and in a few instances, a few errors
at the back opened up opportunities for Hakoah to score. Thankfully for us they
couldn’t in that first-half. Despite all this we had a couple of good chances
to score ourselves, but we had to wait 5 minutes before the half-time break to
open the scoring. A Sydney Olympic corner wasn’t dealt with by the opposition
and in the ensuing scramble George Timotheou smashed the ball into the back of
the net to give us a 1-0 lead, which is how the score remained at the half-time
interval.
The first few moments of the second-half were fairly subdued and we looked
comfortable with our lead. Pretty soon though Hakoah turned up the pressure as
they desperately sought an equaliser. They did have a few chances to score,
only some last ditch desperate defending preserved our lead. We had patches
where we looked dangerous in attack ourselves and we could have extended our
lead, but it was the opposition who would grab an equaliser midway through the
second-half from a shot after we failed to deal with a corner. There was a
noticeable increase in urgency from Sydney Olympic after conceding the goal and
pretty soon after we piled on the pressure and it paid off. After being awarded
a freekick, the initial delivery was dealt with by the opposition but they
could do nothing about the second ball which found Alejandro Sanchez, who
nodded home to restore our lead with around 10 minutes remaining. In that time,
we really should have just wound down the clock, held onto possession and held on
for the win but instead we panicked, giving away too much ball in our defensive
third and inviting a wave of pressure into our own goalmouth. Only some
last-ditch defending, poor finishing from Hakoah and the woodwork saved us and stopped
us from dropping points. It was a relief then, when the referee finally blew
for full-time to seal our 3rd win after 4 rounds.
On the officiating for this match, it was amateurish to say the least, it was
as if they had no idea about the rules of the game, really poor. For us overall,
it was a patchy performance against a team that is good at dragging their
opposition down to their level and turning matches into scraps, which is what
the game turned into. But it was also a good test of character for the team and
the players, so we did well to come through it in that aspect.
It is also 3 wins from 3 now at home this season, which is great and hopefully
we can turn Belmore into a fortress this season.
For the Club Championship, the U18s did not play, but the U20s did come up with
a big 3-0 win.
Our next match is this Tuesday Night April 3, in Round 4 of the FFA Cup against
Emu Plains FC, the match will be played at Peter Moore Field, which is behind
the hill at Belmore Sports Ground, Kick-Off is at 7.30pm.
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