The Lions' final cup run this season came to a frustrating, controversial end at the hands of old nemesis Double H. Wasted chances in the first half and a soft second half penalty leaves the Lions waiting another season for a chance at Cup success.
Line-up
Paige (GK),
Kyle (RB), Simon (CB), Matt R (CB), Ollie (LB)
JP (CM), Lee M (CM), Dale (CM)
Gregg (RF), Scott (CF), Gary (LF)
The game was supposed to be played the week before, but there was a mix-up with the pitches by Tiffins, so this was the re-scheduled kick-off with prize being a semi-final against Lind Athletic next week. Encouragingly enough given that we hadn't had a game in four weeks, we started brightly and made most of the early running. We had numerous chances to take the lead in the first 15 minutes. Dale had the first sight of goal as he ran onto a loose ball in the area but put it way over the bar. Scott, Gary and Gregg all had one-on-one opportunities with the keeper any one of which should have been converted but to be fair, the keeper did really well in coming count and charging down the shots.
It's a sign of our season though that the more chances we kept missing, the more nervous we were getting and the oppo were starting to create opportunities of their own. Paige had to make a couple of saves as the half wore on and he survived a penalty shout when an onrushing attacker fell dramatically as they both challenged for the ball.
We were definitely shading it in the first half, even if we weren't dominating the game as we would have wanted. Our break came when we made an attack down our left flank, with Lee holding the ball up then squaring a pass to the gap between centre-circle and opposition 'D' for Ollie to run onto. He hit a fierce low drive right into the left-hand corner that gave the keeper no chance.
Despite the Double H pressure we held out to take the lead into the interval. Like so many games at the beginning of this season though, we just did not come back out for the second half. The first 5 minutes after the restart, we could not get out of our half. As expected Double H came at us with their temp cranked up a couple of notches and we simply couldn't match them. We were second to every ball, we couldn't clear our lines and at times we simply invited them to score. We had a warning when their attacker got through on goal after a hopeful ball somehow found its way past our defence and Paige did well to block the shot with his legs. We didn't learn though and another hoofed ball found the same man who this time put it away. There are allegations that he'd handballed it but frankly we deserved to concede as we just hadn't got our second half started.
Another failure to clear our lines led to us conceding a corner. It was cleared to the edge of the area and the attacker's attempt to put the ball back in was blocked by Ollie's arm. His hands were down by his side, the ball was hit point blank and there was no movement of hand to ball, but the ref still blew for it. This being the same ref who missed the blatant penalty that Ollie should have conceded in the last game we played, may be he thought he was evening things up, but it was an incredibly dubious penalty to award.
The spot-kick itself was dispatched straight down the middle with Paige diving to his left. So we're now a goal down and finally starting to get our act together with a couple of forays into their penalty area and we even had a penalty shout of our own when Gary went down under a challenge but nothing doing.
We then conceded another penalty when a combination of our players bundled one of theirs over even though I'm sure Paige already had the ball in his hands before the contact was made.
Straight down the middle again and Paige saved it with his legs and managed to get it out for corner. They had more chances, but it was mostly all us especially in the final 5 minutes when they were hanging on for dear life. We had corner after corner, free-kick after free-kick with ball bouncing around their goalmouth so many times, without a telling touch from someone in red (or even green as Paige went up for a few of them) to put it over the line.
The real kick in the teeth though was in the final minute, when one of their players blatantly batted the ball with his hand in order to make a clearance from a corner and it went unseen and ungiven by the ref despite all our protests.
In the end it just wasn't going to be our day. This is most definitely the end of our cup runs for this season and now we can (finally) get back to the business of securing at least 5th place in the league over the remaining 6 fixtures. It's been by far our best showing in the cups this season and it's something to take forward and build upon for the next one.
