East London - 0 Academy - 1

Whilst frying the sausages for Saturday morning breakfast my mind was on blankets and the great Rafa Benitez’s famous blanket quote: “setting up a team is all about the short blanket - if you cover your head, your feet are cold; if you cover your feet, your head is cold. Sometimes when you attack too much, you are exposed in defence and to find the balance is the key.” The Academy have been excellent going forward – 15 goals in two games is not to be sniffed at but eight goals conceded the previous week was on my mind. Our set up is attacking, our defensive personnel minimal.

Still focus on the teams strengths. Stephen Brown became the latest to be handed a defensive shift creating space for the more attack minded younger players of which we have a plentiful supply. My mind was also engaged with one of my players work issues as much as I sympathise with the cause of Extinction Rebellion I think I would have seriously increased my use of single use plastics and not bothered with recycling this week had their activities kept one of my players away from the game.

That all got resolved and we were ready to go. Same system some slight tweaks of position. The captain was concerned that the wide midfield players weren’t paying enough attention to defensive duties so decided that less talk and more action were required and dropped into that space.

I think its fair to say the game was one-way traffic for the majority of the time. Both halves followed a similar pattern. The Academy on the front foot and create tons of chances. Lots of shots on goals but whilst the passing and movement was on point the finishing wasn’t. Harry Lewis, Frank Lewis, George Mortlock, Stuart Piper, Ian Forbes, Fraser Forbes, Gary MacDonnell all with shots and chances, good ones – not half chances all spurned. Chris Minor was the only player to score about 15 mins in. Such was our dominance at that point I though once the shackles had been broken, we with go on and convert a hatful. Never happened. I don’t think I need to be to concerned we earned the chances with some really positive, attacking, incisive hockey. It was one of those days in front of goal.

Despite our dominance I did start to get concerned towards the end of the game. East London had a couple of half chances and my belief that if you don’t take your chances you can’t complain if you don’t win was in the back of my mind. But we held out James King not fully stretched at any point.

East London players and umpires were full of praise for our young players, Fraser Forbes in particular catching the eye this week. Very impressive skills drew praise from our opponents. He put in an unanswerable case for Man of the Match. A very pleasing result and performance.

Team: James King, Toby Minor, Sam, Stephen Brown, Gary MacDonnell, Ian Forbes, Chris Minor, Harry Lewis, Frank Lewis, Stuart Piper, George Mortlock, Fraser Forbes, Harvey Ashton.

Man of the Match: Fraser Forbes