St Martins 5-7 Central United

Positives: Showed real character to come back from behind twice, excellent goals, won against a good team despite not playing our best, through to quarter finals.  

Areas to focus on: Taking one too many touches before getting shot/cross in, going to meet the ball to be first to it, showing same urgency from the start

Goalscorer's: Marcus 2, Zak WD 2, Matt, George, Zak M

Man of the match: Ollie - what a show! Came off his line brilliantly on numerous occasions to serve as another defender, 2 fantastic saves in the shoot out to put his team through next round of the cup.  

Worth a mention:  Luke and Ted - worked their socks off and didn't shirk a single tackle

Manager's comments: In the first half we looked like a team that hadn't played for over a month and St Martins deservedly went into the break 2-0 up and it was hard to see a turn around but the oranges seem to do the trick and a different United came out in the second half.  It looked like we were going to rue some of the missed opportunities but then Marcus got us back in the game with a cool finish.  With our tails up and St Martins looking rattled, Zak WD thumped home a excellent low shot at the near post to take the game to extra time.  

Going behind again in extra time it looked we were going to narrowly miss out but then with only a few minutes left on the clock Matt produced a shot out of nothing from distance that flew into the top right corner taking the game to a shoot out!

From the quality displayed by the players involved in the shoot out you would never have believed they were English!  George, Zak WD, Zak M and Marcus confidently stepped up and converted brilliantly.  Ollie completed the job by pulling off 2 tremendous saves to top off what was an outstanding keeper performance.  

Well done chaps!

Training tomorrow night as usual, 7pm to 8pm.  I'm afraid I will be in London but Luke will still be there to run it.  Paul Land has kindly agreed to stay so there is an adult present.