With summer on its way at last, what a pleasant change it was for the kids to play on a good dry pitch and with a bit of sunshine!!
Stratton Juniors were our visitors this morning and we were keen to put last week’s uncharacteristic performance behind us.
From the start of the match we certainly looked a lot stronger than last week and the passing was better. The first 10 minutes of the match were quite a tense affair as neither team was giving too much away. But when the breakthrough did come it came our way, after Connor won the ball with a strong tackle and played a lovely pass through to Alex who slotted home confidently. Great defending by Seamus and H ensured that we went into half time with a one goal advantage.
Three or four minutes into the second half Ryan scored our second goal of the match latching onto a loose ball in the Stratton box after some good approach play by Regan and Alex. Again Stratton came back at us and again we held strong with more great covering from Seamus and great goalkeeping from Michael, but when a ball fell to a Stratton player on the edge of our box it was struck well and found the bottom corner 2-1.
Strong tackling from Jack W and Connor in midfield meant that ESC soon gained the momentum back and before long it was 3-1 when Regan worked hard to carve out another chance which was buried by Jack P.
With a few minutes left on the clock we scored our fourth and last goal of the game when Jack W (playing against his Stratton schoolmates) struck a fierce shot from a narrow angle which flew into the net after brushing a Stratton player on its way in.
A better performance than last week, not just because of the score line, but because we looked physically stronger and went back to trying to pass the ball and after working on defending and defensive body shape in training this week, I was very pleased to see the players had taken this onboard and used it in today’s game.
Final Score: ESC 4 – Stratton Juniors 1