| Match Report
On the same afternoon that the Premierships big glamour clash was being played, The Pride Of Bilbao contested a match of the complete opposite nature in a 'dead' fixture against bottom of the league Kings Park Rangers in our last league fixture of the season. It was taken that we would win, with a two match aggregate score of 10-1 so far this season but it was more of a question of by how many and how would our motivation be.
The team selection was altered slightly from last Sunday's destruction at the hands of league winners Poyntz, with unfortunate injury victim Jonsey ruled out for 6 weeks with a broken wrist and keeper John unavailable. We switched to our attacking 3-5-2 formation with Steve undertaking the unfamiliar role in between the sticks to become our 5th custodian of the season and Rich Sutton playing instead of Jonsey.
From the off we were all over KPR and spent the majority of the time playing down our stronger right wing with Paul and Jenks supplying plenty of crosses and entertainment. we scored our first within the opening 10 mins when a fine deep cross was whipped in from the right and Benny H getting in between the keeper and defender to finish off with a good low header at the back stick. From here it should have lead to an avalanche of goals. but despite a lot of decent attacking play the Bilbao ranks seemed to lack the conviction to shoot and really go for the kill. We had plenty of possession but not many clear cut chances Ross was playing wonderfully well and alongside Eddy there passes were providing us with the needed penetration, but this wasn't turned into anything else, until Phil who seemed to be playing as a third striker burst through into the box and onto a pass from Denny beating the their players for speed and reactions and slotted the ball home nicely from about 10 yards. The rest of the first half was fairly non-descript with a few nice touches and flicks from Jenks and Paul and with us firmly in control. KPR did come in to the game more as it went on but without any real chances, they had a few breaks down our unguarded left flank with Skippy working hard to close them down, but the back 3 was fairly redundant and stand-in keeper Steve only needing to make a couple of half saves and a few continental style clearances from crosses and throws. In fact the main thing KPR concentrated on was kicking pieces out of Neil... could it be possible, had Neil offended somebody ?!?!?
The second half was much the same... very frustrating to watch with us attacking constantly but with no end product. The back 3 looked bored, after having nothing to do, Neil was playing a game to see if he could actually kick the ball with his left foot, and Steve doing his best to annoy the lino Jonesy and that was about it, Then finally Denny sprang into life and onto a loose ball in the area and finished low and in the corner. Then the unthinkable happened KPR scored as their lone striker finished firmly past Steve from around 10 yards... Steve got a hand to but just couldn't keep it out. Would this spur the Bilbao army into a storming finale with plenty of goals... in a word NO we continued in our lacklustre fashion until one of the funnier goals of this season was scored, as amazingly Jenks meet a cross from Denny in the area with his HEAD, and all 5ft 4in of him powered a header goal wards, this bounced once before reaching the keeper who seemed to then scoop it up and almost push it down and into the net... it must have been the surprise of Jenks getting up high enough. this made it 4-1 and kept Andy firmly in the race for second top goal scorer with Phil. The game finished at this score with Calver also getting a late run out !!!
So our league campaign has ended and a final position of third or forth now looks likely, this game was a typical end of season match, but at least we got the win and another 3 points. We had some good performances with Denny getting another goal but more importantly actually setting a couple up. Jenks played well but man of the match was Ross who was excellent in the first half plenty of nice touches and passes and impressively he outworked all of his midfield partners this continued in the second half although understandably tiring in the second half... just what the lad needed !!!
Next up it's the completion of the FA Cup with 4 games left to play... and hopefully a semi-final !!!
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