| Match Report
With the league season now wrapped up, it was time for the Bilbao to concentrate on the newly reformatted Frank Alldis Cup. This was our second game in the competition and after a 7-1 drubbing of KPR we were confident against another struggling Division 1 team WW Nomads.
We are now playing our home games at Abbeylands, with decent facilities but an overgrown pitch. We kicked off with a fairly strong team only Ross, long term casualty Jonesy and keeper John were missing, with John being absent again Phil had the unenviable task of stepping between the sticks and after a dodgy warm we were all concerned !!!
The game kicked off with us playing against a heavy wind, so most teams would then maybe try and play the ball on the ground in short sharp flowing movements, unfortunately though they kept on punting the ball long, and we kept launching it back to them... which is fine if your playing into the wind but all that happened was that Nomads got a grip on the game and controlled possession. They were hitting their big target man effectively and Eddy and Neil were struggling to get to grips with him.
The inevitable soon happened and Nomads took the lead with a hotly disputed penalty... it was hotly disputed because it was a clear dive with the accused Rich not even making a challenge... as I'd said earlier their was a strong wind it must have been this that knocked him over, the resulting penalty was confidently finished into the bottom right corner. As we'd started to get our game together, we then went even further behind as from a corner our marking was very poor and allowed them a free header to go 2-0 up... this left us fairly shell-shocked, but we persevered and continued to try and play our way into the game, we had a couple of long range blazes at goal and got into some promising positions however something really seemed to be missing today we had a real lack of urgency and commitment. To compound this we then went 3-0 down as again our marking from a corner was extremely poor and we allowed them another free header that Phil was unlucky not to save. So we trudged off at half-time thoroughly dejected. Phil had done a good job in goal but had let 3 goals in in with only about 4 shots faced, due to our poor defending as a team.
Keith gave us a pep talk at half-time insisting that despite the score weren't playing that badly as a team and with the wind now at our backs we could still get something from this game. So we kicked off the second half hoping he was right. The second half was an improvement as we gained far more of the ball and started to press forward. The break through came when Denny after a side wards run across the edge of the box unleashed a cracking drive that bent into the top right hand corner, was this the start of the Keith's predicted comeback ???
We continued to control most of the game and huffed and puffed without our making any real clear chances while restricting them to brief counter-attacks, until Phil blotted his otherwise exemplary copybook, when he came charging out to cut out a through ball he got his hand to this but carried on running without the ball, leaving an empty goal for thier striker to finish. The rest of the game played out much the same and finished 4-1 to Nomads.
It wasn't a pretty game and certainly not a good result, Since the Walton game about a month ago the Bilbao army really seems to have dropped it's work ethic, and seem to be coasting relying on our natural skills... unfortunately this hasn't been enough lately... we now have to win all of our remaining games to qualify from this group that includes beating 2 Premiership teams... have we got the appetite for it, or are we already on our summer holidays... our socks need to be firmly rolled up !!!
As for man of the match, well there wasn't many contenders apart from the comedy blooper Phil did well in goal and didn't deserve to let 4 in, and Denny scored a lovely goal. But I'd have to give it to Skippy for a solid display at the back, and was one of the few players who actually seemed motivated !!!... better luck next week lads !!!
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