KENSINGTON DRAGONS U14s 0 V 2 BESSINGBY PARK RANGERS A.
Linford christie stadium was venue for the under 14s first home game of the season against the side that sounds like a team that just stepped out of the pages of a Roy of the Rovers comic book.
Bessingby arrived for the Challenge Cup match lead by a new manager, the previous one presumably ‘let go’ after failing to secure promotion from Division 2 last season. It’s a cruel, cut-throat, results based business in the Harrow Youth League. As well as a new manager they had a new keeper. But he wasn’t really a keeper, just an outfield player in a orange bib and wearing gloves. Surely the Dragons would take advantage of this potential weak link and test him at every available opportunity?
They are always good, close games against Bessingby and after our great performance last week we had high hopes of progressing in the cup competition.
The early signs were promising when in the opening minutes Waleed made a great run that had been worked on in training, and should have put the Dragons one nil up. His resulting left foot shot trickled wide.
However there seemed to be a prevailing feeling of lethargy throughout the team. They lacked urgency and weren’t working hard enough for each other.
And sure enough, just six minutes into the game the momentum swung the other way.
The Dragons gave away a silly free kick on their right-hand side and Bessingby sent a hopeful high ball in on our goal. Our keeper misjudged the flight of the ball and it sailed over his head and into the net. These things happen, he’s saved us on numerous occasions in the past and it was still early in the game and there was plenty of time to get back into it.
On 23 minutes Bessingby launched the ball forward and Joe, who had been having a great game at centre back, went to head the ball away. Instead of forwards, the ball went back towards his own goal and a goggle-wearing Bessingby forward was the first to react, smashing the ball home.
The referee’s whistle brought the first period of play to a close and it was 0-2 at the break. The Dragons were still very much in this game and the half time team talk was all about raising the tempo, keeping it simple and moving the ball quicker with less touches.
But alas, even the magical qualities of the half time oranges couldn’t turn the game around. And whilst there were encouraging Dragons debuts for David at Centre back and Waseem in goal, it wasn’t a great performance by any means.
We had another goal disallowed for off side, the second in as many weeks. But apart from that we barely had a shot on target to test their stand-in keeper, which was very disappointing. If we didn’t deserve to lose last week then we didn’t deserve to win this week.
We greatly missed one half of our central midfield partnership and lacked a potent threat up front against their rangy 6 foot five centre half.
Hopefully that’s got the below par performance out of our system and we can kick on and put in a good showing in the league next Sunday.