Woodbridge Town 13 Woodland Colts 0

Sunday 28th October 2007

Team: Elsom; Cooney; Abdel-Aziz; Hopkins (captain); Wickson; Marshall; Read; Portaluri; Dimuccio; Taylor; Christie. Subs: Burgoyne; Baldwin; Aveston; Hayward. Half-time 8-0 Full-time 13-0 Goal scorers: Taylor (6); Christie (3); Hopkins (3); Hayward Having not played for three weeks this was always going to be a challenging game and the boys did look somewhat rusty in the first fifteen minutes against bottom of the league, Woodland Colts. The opposition packed their defence and despite discussing the need to use the whole width of the pitch the boys tended to try to play through the middle and as a consequence the opening exchanges were somewhat scrappy. Marcus Taylor had a couple of goals rightly disallowed for offside, as the ball wasn’t delivered quick enough into his path. It was only when Giorgio Dimuccio and Ewan Wickson were brought into the game wide on the left that openings were created and Kieron Marshall was unlucky to see his shot from Giorgio’s cross go over the bar. Giorgio also narrowly failed to lob the keeper with his shot dropping just over the bar. The boys remained patient and eventually broke the deadlock when the opposition keeper was unable to hold Jack Christie’s drive. Jack added a second soon after he won possession and drove into the penalty area and steered a shot by the advancing keeper. However the boys were still not passing the ball and creating the space that was a hallmark of some of their earlier games and as a consequence a tactical change saw leading goal scorer Laurence Portaluri drop into midfield with the instructions to open up the play and this he did in quite outstanding fashion. Suddenly the ball was being passed around and all that was good in this passage of play sprang from Laurence’s boot and Matty Read’s tenacity in winning the ball in the centre of midfield. It was no surprise that the goals then followed. The defensive shape was very good in the first half and the partnership between Khaled Abdel-Aziz and Ben Hopkins is working well. In the final fifteen minutes of the first-half six more goals were added with both Marcus Taylor and Ben Hopkins grabbing hat-tricks in this period. Marcus showed great composure in picking up his goals and even passed the ball into the net for his third. Ben scored a tremendous goal from just outside the area and then followed this up with two goals from corners. Jack Christie’s delivery at corners was certainly causing the Woodlands defence problems and it was also good to see the boys putting into practice some of what they have learned in recent weeks from Heathy and Sean Thacker.  The first-half ended with changes being made to the team’s line-up and this gave some of the boys an opportunity to move into different positions. Gus Cooney, who had played well at right-back in the first period, was given an opportunity at centre-half and he won several tackles and covered well. Jack Baldwin came on at right-back for his second game of the season and again it was good to see him passing the ball and linking up well with both Harry Hayward and Kieron Marshall. Jonno Aveston also came on at left midfield and he linked well with Laurence and Ewan, who showed great energy in getting up field from left-back to support the attack. Jonno was also unfortunate to see his goal bound shot cleared off the line. However further goals were added and Jack Christie scored his third, Harry Hayward again showed his ability to finish when put through one-on-one with the keeper and Marcus grabbed three more and in the process scoring his second double-hat-trick of the campaign. Giorgio also saw a shot rebound off the post late on. This was a much needed game, before next week’s top of the table clash with Honington Foxes, even though goalkeepers, Joe Elsom and Emile Burgoyne were largely redundant. In the first half Joe touched the ball once.