A flowing move, culminating in Irish Dave, playing as a make-shift striker, finished off with aplomb put the Maroons 1-0 up. Moments later, Ian cut in from the left and sent in a perfect cross, only for Dave to show why he normally plays at the back, his clearing header soaring over the bar when it seemed easier to stick the ball in the net (OK it wasn't that easy a chance). The Maroons then saw out the final few minutes to record a second victory.
Wait on...the game started 80 minutes earlier??? No one told us. What, we were 3-0 down when Dave scored? How come, none of us saw their goals. Truth is, for 80 minutes the Maroons had barely shown up. 1-0 down at the break and the common held view was that the Hogs couldn't play as well again in the second half and we couldn't play as badly. Ant had had one shot when through (unfortunately too close to the keeper) and I'd had a header loop in the general direction of their goal, but we hadn't really threatened them at all.
So, expecting their performance level to drop and ours to increase we started the second half still well in the game. Instead, they got better and we got worse.
First to the ball, winning 40-60 tackles, playing it on the deck, anyone would have thought they were in maroon and we were in yellow and black. And to make matters worse, they played fairly and the game generally was played in good spirit. Maybe that was half our problem - no mongrel.
To be fair, we were missing Tony, Fergus, Shakey, John and Gary (both of them) and possibly our midfield missed their bite, but all over the pitch we were decidely second best.
As predicted Uni were on the wrong side of an 8 goal drubbing, which possibly puts our 2-1 win v them into context. We need to (and definitely can) improve markedly for the next game.
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