Egbertians 2nd XI V's Mount Pleasant Post Office

AFA Essex Intermediate Cup Semi-Final
01/03/2003

If football ability and talent alone were enough then the second team would have beaten Mount Pleasant in the AFA Essex Intermediate Cup Semi-Final. 

We started brightly putting Mount Pleasant under quick pressure having a few breaks but did not look very Sharpe in front of goal, Dave got the opener for us after fighting his way into the box to dig out a goal. Mount Pleasant then woke up playing allot better for the rest of the half and put several quality crosses into the box which our defenders handled resolutely keeping the score to 1-0 at half time. 

Early in the second half Dave again skilfully put himself passed the defence only to have a Mount Pleasant player hanging onto his shirt pull him off the ball, the referee quickly gave the free kick but failed to send the player off? Minutes later the same player wrestled Gary to the floor inside the box only again to get lucky and concede a free kick but no booking i put it down to the pitch being poorly marked out and not the linesman. Ryan Wood flashed the ball wide with just the keeper to beat very unlucky seeing as he has been on good form the last few games. Mount Pleasant took there time getting the equaliser but they got it on the 65 minute when the Sweetlove came off his line to collect the ball only to have it kicked out of his hands there was protest from the Egs players but the Ref signalled that the goal stood. Their second goal, barely a few minutes later was the result of a dreadful offside line, which previously had been very solid but credit must go to the Mount Pleasant striker who was running all day trying to break our back line down, He rounded the keeper to put them in front. They made it 3-1 when the Sweetlove took down a player in the box giving away a penalty he should have been sent off but the Ref chose not to book him as it was not really that sort of game. We pushed on trying to get back into the game when Ryan took full advantage of a great flick on from John to make it 3-2.

With ten minutes to go we needed another goal throwing on another striker we started to pin Mount Pleasant back but the Centre Mid who had been having a superb game got the ball on the break and put it out to the winger who crossed it into the Mount Pleasant forward who jumped closing his eyes, the ball came luckily off his head over Sweetlove and into the back of the net to finish the game off.

The final score was 4-2; we were beaten by better and more physical team who should eventually lift the cup on the March 29th. 

Looking back i think we could have committed ourselves a bit more when changeling for the ball and need to close the opposition down faster.

Many thanks to the officials on the day who did a great job
Referee: Philip Marchant
Assist Referees: Lawrence Payne & David Blackborow