2G - Westway Sports Centre, Shepherd's Bush - 8.20pm - 6-a-side - vs FootyAddicts Westway League
Same again this week, Kos from Footy Addicts organised us a game against a team from their Wednesday night 6-a-side league, as we took on Bobby Firmino Out FC.
They were currently 4th in their league, so on paper, we were thinking a slightly easier opponent than last's Newco FC, who were gunning for the championship. But this is why we love football so much, you just can't predict it sometimes.
The boys weren't as nervous as they were last week, a little more confidence, despite losing 8-1.
As the game started, we were determined to focus on a few things:-
- Keep it simple, no skills and tricks in our own half. It should be 80% doing the basics right sprinkled in with 20% skills and tricks. Play as a team
- Play to feet. No high balls, keep it low.
- Defend our own half: as soon as we lose the ball in their half, pull back, don't chase, catch a breath and get in formation and mark a man each.
- Communicate
For the first half, we stuck hard to these principles, we kept the ball well, passed it simple, low and to our feet. And we were rewarded, we held out for 10mins before conceding the first goal, but we hit back fast, making it 1-1. Soon we were 2-1 and 3-2 down but we responded well, each time. At 3-3, we made a double back pass, which was against the rules, and we were punished with a penalty which they scored, to put the score at 4-3 to BFO FC, at half time.
At this point, the penalty was a bit of a blow, but we had performed admirably. But then it all went wrong.
Going out into the 2nd half, match fitness started to tell, and our opponents had subs, which in my opinion was the only difference and we're talking about fine margins at games of this level.
Struggling with fitness, we failed to run back, were slack with man-marking, and failed to put pressure on our opponents, and constantly they found the space, got the ball and piled in the goals. 5 goals in the 2nd half with no response from us as we began to wilt.
The final score was 9-3 (despite the ref, saying it was 10-3 - we have a full recording of the game, so can 100% vouch for that). On that point, teams pay a lot of money to take part in these leagues and the level of refereeing was substandard. Last week's ref was great, giving us advise, this week he was lazy, was on his phone and couldn't even get the final score right. I mean if goal difference was a deciding factor in this league....how bad would that of been?
Anyways, the Westway Wednesday Night League has come to a close, we managed to play 2 proper competitive games.....and have learnt loads from them. We mustered up, 8 players for the games, and have some 100% extra players for a Monday night league, which we plan to join in January '22.
We'll put in some normal 5-a-side games versus randoms via the FA website till then, to get more understanding of each other, and personally everyone has to get fitter. But playing our first league will represent a lot, it's another part of the FC7 story, our individual journeys, and competing regularly will only make us better!
Onwards and upwards! It's the fc7way.
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