After not playing for four weeks, playing the team at the top of the league was not the ideal game to come back to! After Pines turned up at 10.25 the game kicked off a few minutes late and after a scrappy start, Chaseside started playing some great one touch football. New edition Ryan Glasspool was added to the first team starting line-up and was making his presence known in the center of the park alongside Hicksio. Between them and Danny the midfield was being totally dominated by the Squirrels. Pines were finding it hard to get out of their own half and were opting to play the long ball up to their big target man which was being comfortably dealt with by man on the match Ty Wilson. Keeper Steve Dunford did not have anything to do for the entire first half and even though Chaseside were dominating every area of the pitch the finishing was slightly off and the Pines keeper was rarely called into action.
At half time the manager asked for more of the same, to go on and keep pressing and battling for every ball. This was backed up by the rest of team who saw that this Pines team were there for the taking.
The short break came and went and the game was soon back underway. Pines came out the stronger team and quite rightly so as they were awful in the first half and applied some early pressure. Most of their play was coming from there creative center midfielder, however after a few minutes Chaseside had the game back under control. Alot of the danger was coming from set pieces which Pines could not deal with but still the break through would not come. Around the 65th minute Ludo played a great ball down the line which Steve Crozier ran onto and found himself 1 on 1 with the keeper but unluckily slid the ball the wrong side of the post. Ryan was next to volley an effort wide after a great first touch and then Matt Hicks bought a great save from the Pines keeper after an overhead kick. More pressure was then applied by Chaseside and Ty was next to volley wide and it seemed it was going to be one of those days. With 10 minutes to go the game opened up and Pines probably finished the stronger team and in the 89th minute the ball dropped to the little midfielder who took a touch and hit a powerful shot towards goal, however this was too close to Dunny who easily dealt with it. From the resulting goal kick the game was finished.
Considering Chaseside had not played for 4 weeks, they at times outplayed the league leaders and got a deserved point and can consider themselves a bit unlucky not to take all 3. Next week is the final game before Xmas and a big game against strugglers Townsend.
Up The Squirrels!!
