with 16 on the team sheet we have a few late dropouts and a few no shows leaving us just 1 sub for the match.
Some new faces, a few people back from injury and no keeper so we started with Patrick(GK), left to right Scott, Jon, Colin, Sanj, Hemant, DavidP, Matt, Jeff, Marc, Amoy and Jamil on the bench.
A short delay as colin was told to remove his gloves even though they were covering the cuts to his hands having just been taken out on his bike.
A bad start saw a ball bounce over our defence, Patrick came out only for their striker to pounce and chip the ball in 1-nil down. a few minutes later Sanj decided that Jamil was looking lonely on the bench, slapped one of their players for having a bad hair cut and got duly carded. A quick shuffle with Hemant dropping to right back and then switching shortly after with Scott. Infinity won a free kick outside the box, curled the ball round the wall and over Patrick’s outstretched hand into the top left corner 2-nil down.
On a small pitch our diminished numbers were not really stretched and we had more possession for the remainder of the half winning a few corners and putting them under pressure, however a long ball over our defence saw one of their player’s appear to be offisde, our back 4 stopped, a whistle blew and Patrick watching the guy run around and score, unfortunatly the whistle was the pitch next door, 3-nil down and the game was running away from us despite how we were playing, however moments later David found himself in some space just over the half way line and delivered a thunderbolt volley straight into the top left corner for his debut goal. 3-1 and we looked right back in the game.
1 change at half time with Matt off for Jamil who pushed up front and Jeff dropping into midfield and Amoy playing on the right. We continued to attack and had most of the posession, 15mins to go Jeff switched in goal for Patrick. So nice play in their half saw Marc have a few chances, Amoy had a great run down the right drawing their defenders over and their keeper before calmly passing across the face of the goal for Jamil, who dummied kicking the ball with his right and left the ball bounce into the goal off his stationary left foot, 3-2 and we were looking good for grabbing a point.
As usual the ref had other ideas and every 50:50 decision went their way including overruling his linesmen to give the opposition all the throw-ins, after Patrick politely pointed this out he got a yellow, moments later David said something similar only for the ref to show Patrick a red. confusion rained as the ref faffed around, stopped the game and slowly walked over to Patrick to say he could play having mistakenly thought it was a second yellow. Again we attacked with Amoy laying waste to the right wing, however the ref decided the game was getting to close and blew up 5 minutes early claiming it was too dark.
A close game and a great fight back however with 1 point from 4 games we need to get our season going. We take a break for a week or so next match 9pm Ma On Shan stadium league against Kar Shung and hopefully we will be sporting our new kits – make sure you paid your subs though….
Mug of the day is a toss up between Patrick for the 3rd goal and Sanj for his red card, seeing as I’m writing the report Sanj wins for not even giving the guy a proper punch.
Man of the match is a close call between newbies Amoy and DavidP who both had great games, however DavidP edges it with his stunning goal
nites 2 Infinity 1
goals: DavidP, Jamil
cards: Sanj RC, Jeff YC, Patrick YC.