Our 3rd game back in the new year comes against a Hayden side who sit top of our league. This game however is in the cup quarter final. Due to a shortage of our own squad players, we have both Louis and William from the first team playing for us. We knew it would be a very difficult game, as we played them twice last year; once in the league and once in a pre-season friendly. As the game started, we knew that we had the pace to get in behind them as we found out within the opening 10 minutes. But we just couldn’t get our shots away, which has been the story for our last couple of games. Despite our lack of attacking threat, the other team also seemed to have that problem as well. But they were the ones who opened the scoring first, as a cross into the middle of the box found their striker who headed in for 1-0. We then got in behind their defence with Matt’s ball to Ciaran, whose pull back found Michael, but he couldn’t get the ball out of his feet. As we headed into half time, we felt that our performance was ok defensively and in the midfield, but our front 4 just wasn’t clicking.

The second half also brought up the same problems, we kept Hayden at bay pretty much but couldn’t get the breakthrough. We went forward a couple of times yet couldn’t get a clean shot at the keeper. Louis came close with a free kick which narrowly went wide of the left-hand post. And Hayden got their second as Parkwood pushed forward for the equaliser, leaving us short at the back, as a looped cross to the back post went over Romeo’s head and found an unmarked attacker for 2-0. Overall, this game was unlucky from our perspective, as we hadn’t performed that badly. More focus and training on our attacking options to come in the next few weeks.

Match report by Ciaran Larkin