Wow.
What a response to last weekends disappointment. A game which had it all, penalties, dodgy refereeing decisions, sin bins, disallowed goals, a punch in the face, 6 goals and a red card.
The game began with the first whistle, blown by the same referee who made some questionable decisions last week. We feared he might perform the same way … our fears turned into reality where he disallowed our first goal early on and awarded Petts Wood an interesting penalty which they converted to make it 1-0. We were the better team throughout the first half creating good chances. You could tell the boys wanted it today as the commitment and effort in the match could not be faulted. As the clock ticked into the 42nd minute our captain Cormac picks up the ball in midfield, opens up his body and pings the ball to Chillu, it was like watching Paul Scholes in his prime. Chillu was in a great position out wide and managed to deliver the ball into box and in comes Jamie Mander, who was immense today, and smashes it into the back of the net. That had been coming. 1-1. Game On.
At half time we had a decision to make, we could go out there and give it our all, regardless of the ref or we can complain, get sinned binned and give up (like last week!). Thank God we didn’t do the latter. The second half started much like the first with everyone playing brilliantly, again Cormac picks up the ball and slides in Chillu who’s shot is saved but Alex is there to finish the job with a great finish. In just over 10 minutes we had the lead. The game ticked on and Petts Wood had no chances, our back 5, yet again did fantastically. With 20 minutes to go the game was still very tense at 2-1. Chillu, who had his best game of the season today, drives with the ball and finds Jamie who sets up Junior to make it 3-1, a sigh of relief and eruption of joy from the fans as we knew this was our game to lose. What followed was not a pleasant sight, and is the ugly side of football at this age, an argument broke out between one of our players and Petts Wood’s and next thing we see is the Petts Wood player punching ours in the face, this caused a heated couple of minutes where Vince and I would like to thank Patrick Farrell for keeping the boys calm whilst we spoke to the referee who dealt with the situation well and sent off the Petts Wood player. Petts Wood were down to 9 men due to a sin bin, we took full advantage of this with Jamie Mander winning a penalty, converted by Junior. 3 minutes later, Henry Farrant who came on at half time and changed the game, receives a fantastic ball from Cormac and finishes cooly to sign off a fantastic 5-1 victory. What brilliant character shown by all 15 boys today who were a credit to Seymour Villa. You can tell how well our defence did in shutting out the opposition by how little I have mentioned them. On another day this could have been 6-0 but 5-1 is pretty darn good.
A week ago our weekends were ruined and I asked the boys if they really wanted to play football? Today the answer was clear. Yes they do!
Full Time: Petts Wood Robins 1 , SVFC U17’s 5
Coaches Sam and Vince