A dry morning at Carlton Park with the pitch looking surprisingly good after the hammering it took last week.
The Sutton lads were well up for the game and from the KO it was clear that the lads were not going to be able to match the score from last week with Sutton making the early running and Jack having to make saves inside 4 minutes before the Sax lads had even had a sight of goal. The play seemed a little scrappy but it was down to Sutton closing down quickly and not giving the boys time on the ball that they had last week. After 14 Mins the lads started to find some space out wide and balls from the right from Rossi and Left from Meiks couldn't get the final touch to get the lead, On 17 Fish won the ball in midfield and found Arron with a pass inside he looked up and picked out Rossi who controlled the ball and put it past the keeper to make it Sax 1 - 0 Sutton. Then 3 mins later Rossi thought he shoule help the away team by hugging on to a player in the area and giving aay a penalty. The pen was stuck well and into the bottom corner and equaled the scores. The rest of the half was well battled and Sutton looked a far better side than the visitors from division 1 last week.
The 2nd half started badly for Sax we gave away a FK on the edge of the area and as the lads set up the wall the ref gave John a yellow card for coming on at half time without his permission, to say that is a harsh yellow on the player is an understatement and I should have been booked if he was going to book anyone but what can you do.
On 45 Sax retook the lead when Ed found Rossi with a good ball and Rossi again just tucked it past the keeper a trademark Rossi goal and 1 to settle the nerves. The away team didn't stop playing and kept going at the lads and we ere pushing forward when we could we had several corners and still we can't score from them but the fact that we are getting them is good but we must score more from them. The ref evened up the pen count on the 65th minute when Rossi was tripped in the box and there was a 3 way discussion about who was taking it. Ed did the captains job and made the decision that Arron should carry on his pen taking duties and he stepped up and did not let us down slotting it in to the bottom corner. We had chances to wrap the game up but didn't take them and could have paid the price later in the game we conceded after a back pass didn't quite reach Jack and "Ken" nipped in with a hint of a pull back on Finch and a lucky deflection to put the ball in the empty net. The thing that upset me about that was the fact that some of the lads thought it was great that Ken scored and it is for the away team but cheering a goal for the opposition doesn't seem right to me.
The last 10 minutes were made nervy for us but the lads battled well and forced the play. Final Score Sax 3 - 2 Sutton credit to Sutton for giving us a better game than a lot of 1st division teams and good luck to them for the rest of the season. Hopefully that is a performance out of the way that the lads can move on from and improve on over the next few games as they are all going to be tough games we have Tornadoes in the Semi final now and we are going to have to raise the game to get to the final but I know we can do it because we are better than what we showed today.
Well done lads not the best you have played but in football all anyone ever sees is the result on the league website and that says we won so that can't be a bad thing
David
