Mens 3 Vs Horncastle 2

Horncastle made the long trip to Longsands on a bitterly cold day with only 9 players. First off, great credit to them for being able to make it to the match and great credit to them for giving it a real go on the pitch too. They set themselves up well and frustrated us for large parts of the afternoon.

So, onto St Neots. The game started as might have been expected, with Saints having lots of possession and lots of territory in the Horncastle half. We were however unable to provide as many goal scoring chances as we would have liked. We had occasions in the 1st half where we were passing it around nicely and then occasions where we would simply lose possession by lumping it forward straight to a Horncastle player or run into their players. We were also over committing and as a result we were losing shape. 20 mins into the game however, Danny latched onto an opportunity in the D. 1-0.

We had already had a couple of scares where the primary tactic of Horncastle was to lump the ball up to the their young speedy lad up front and with the ball getting through to him on occasion. Shortly after we went 1-0 up, the same thing happened again, this time, with our defence being unable to cut the ball out. The young Horncastle broke loose of the defence and bore down on goal until Chris Smith made a last ditch tackle, culminating rightly in a penalty flick to Horncastle. Flick scored, 1-1

Almost immediately afterwards, we broke up field, won a short, which resulted in Slatch having a shot, initially saved by the keeper, but then a penalty flick being awarded to us. Penalty flick despatched by Danny. 2-1

Half time came shortly after, but not before we had a further couple of short corners which came to nothing.

Onto the half time team talk. I said some pretty harsh words at half time, because frankly, we had not played well, in fact, at times there was a real lack of intensity. We were either not focused enough or trying to hard and having taken 10 minutes off the pitch and seen our goal conceded, I could see we had lost our shape badly. We had to pick it up.

Unfortunately, for the 1st part of the 2nd half, we, if anything got worse. Further passes were going astray, we were running into players and we seemed incapable at times of stringing any kind of passage of play together. Of course, all this was leading to increasing frustration. Horncastle were having further forays forward and while it remained 2-1, we were giving them hope. It didn't help that we were having to reshape our team either with Slatch going off with an injury and Mark dropping into his place. Nathan was also struggling with his ankle.

Mid way through the 2nd half however, Adam scored a great goal from a tight angle, which gave us a bit of breathing space. Danny then proceeded to score 2 more, one with an incredibly deft touch on a through ball. 

5-1 in the end then, without us playing well. We always do seem to find it a challenge against supposedly lesser opposition, whereas we raise our game very well against good teams i.e. we have played really well against 3-4 strong teams in the past month, but struggled today. Even a rollicking at half time doesn't always create the intensity required, but it can be tricky, mentally, playing against 9 or 10 players sometimes and we take the 3 points and move on.