With no League fixture this week, a friendly was arranged with Robins who play in the North Division. It was previously planned for the teams to play 2 matches to give the whole squad a run out, but unfortunately Robins didn’t have enough players on the day to do this which left us with the problem of trying to give all twelve of our player’s time on the pitch.
It was clear from the start of the match that this wasn’t going to be one of our better performances as a good Robins side stormed into a 2 goal lead and left us chasing shadows for large parts of the game. Despite this poor start we did manage to pull back the deficit with goals from Jack and Alex, but looked way off the pace today and it wasn’t long before Robins wrapped up a much deserved win with 3 more well taken goals.
I came away from today’s match feeling slightly bemused with the way we had (or should I say hadn’t) played, as this performance was a million miles away from what we are capable of and of how we’ve been playing lately. Despite the effort being put in by the players there was a lack of composure on the ball and a lack of movement off it and we looked a shadow of the team we were last week.
Had we been playing a mediocre side we may have scraped through it. But to come up against a good side like Robins, we had to be on top of our game and unfortunately for us we picked a bad day to have so many players off form, but these things happen at this age and we must not get too disappointed about it and must keep working hard to get back to playing the way we know we can.
So we now look towards Friday’s match against Swindon Rangers to try and get back on track and hopefully today will prove to be just a minor blip in what so far has been a very good first season.
Despite the frustrations over the way we played today there is one good thing to come out of this display and that is, it has given us another chance to learn to accept defeat which is something every player must taste and I’m pleased to say all our players accepted it well!!
Final Score: ESC 2 – Robins 5