Slow Start Costs Men's 5's

Not as bad as the scoereline looks, after leaking 3 goals in the first 20 minutes we fought back hard for the rest of the game and were unlucky not to get on the scoresheet. Three late withdrawals left us with a rather unbalanced line up and particularly a lack of pace (and 7 changes from the week before, but we're used to that). Whilst Winchmore's veterans were no pacier than ours, their younger players were much bigger and quicker. Facing 2 permanent goalhangers and a couple of zippy midfielders, our defence took a while to find its shape. Nick saved well to keep out the first real threat but we failed to clear the rebound, and two tap-ins followed in the firts 20 minutes as the back 4 was repeatedly outpaced and outnumbered. Once we'd settled we had a much more even game, though the second half was played in a monsoon. Despite some mixed quality passing, we got things moving through midfield, Arjun and Tor making good spaces up the left and Duncan and Rian combining nicely on the right, Dave Harding and Stuart Whittle giving us some good control on the ball in the middle. Andy Benson saw two short corner strikes well saved, and a couple of goal mouth scrambles just wouldn't go over the line. At the other end we learnt from our early mistakes, kept deeper, marked closely and made them work hard, but against a string of short corners we still needed two more good saves from Nick and clearances off the line from Steve and John to keep it down to 3.

Keep it like that, maybe take a little more care on the first touch, and remember to get those passes away a second earlier rather than later, the rest will come.