The Seal vs Gresley FC

The Seal 4 - 1 Gresley 'A'


Scorer: Morton


Team: Ian Parker(c), Matt Gee, Rich Mansfield, Jamie Ball, Andy Simons, Danny Gee, Scott Allsopp, Rich Dowell, Matt Holmes, Ash Riddell, Paul Morton
Subs: Paul Carpenter, Andy Dowell, Ben Whitely

We travelled away to meet The Seal with a good strong squad, which was needed as The Seal have started this season very strongly.

We'd added new signing Carpenter and Andy Dowell, and welcomed the return of Rich Dowell and Whitley who have recovered from injury.

The team talk was quite simple, we needed to get the ball to feet, as I knew The Seal are very good in the air, but we also know that they do play nice neat football as well.

We started and it was plain to see that we didn't have the desire our hosts did; they looked sharper than us and more disappointingly seemed to want it more.

We never got the ball down (not for the first time this season), and on the few times we did win the first ball Seal were far quicker winning most of the seconds. It came as no real surprise that we went behind on twenty minutes when we failed to deal with a long ball. No arguments from me, because being honest, we'd had a few "let offs" before.

Being a goal down I was hoping that we'd show a lot more character, but sadly not as we still didn't get on terms with The Seals' work rate. We did have a few chances ourselves though, and when we did get the ball on the floor The Seals defence looked less comfortable.

From a corner Allsopp rose and headed, only to see his effort thunder off the bar and away from danger. Seal added another before half time as we whimpered to the whistle.

Halftime saw us make one change replacing the injured Matt Gee for Carpenter, and I told the lads that I was disappointed that my pre match talk had fallen on "deaf ears".

Second half we looked a little more purposeful, and Morton pulled one back after Riddell picked him out with a slick pass. So could we actually go and get something out the game which we really hadn't been in for most of the first 50 minutes? Well in simple terms NO, because Seal again undid our defence to make it 3-1.

We made another change replacing Rich Dowell for brother Andy to try and freshen things up a little, this seemed to give us a different and more threatening attack. Seal however showed no mercy when they added a fourth, so it was more a case of pride than anything else.

Morton picked up an injury, so was replaced by Whitely and although both Dowell and Riddell came close to pulling a goal back, we could consider ourselves somewhat fortunate when Seal blasted a penalty way over the bar. I for one was quite relieved to hear the final whistle as I'm sure most the team were.

Well where do we go from here? There are lots of questions that need answering because our overall performance was very, very poor today. It amazes me that we play great football at training, but somehow forget how to do it in games!! I feel that this season's league is tougher than last season, and as we've found out today "if you don't perform you'll get found out".

Overall today was a huge disappointment, so there's lots of work required by everyone to become more consistent. I thought that both Carpenter and Dowell looked good on their debuts, and it was a lift to see that Whitley has recovered from injury on what was a poor day.

MoM: Matt Holmes, today showed just how skilful he is, and was a shining light in a poor team display.