Evergreen 1  Northwood Res. 2

Saturday 14th July 2012

Northwood Res.					Pre-season friendly Parmiter's School, Garston, Herts
1	Kieran Sills	8			Kick Off
2	Dan Thomas	6			1.00 p.m.
3	Massih Mirzai	7			H/T
4	Julian Smith	7			1-0
5	Ed Hatcher	7			Scorers
6	Ricky Rogers	7			Northwood
7	Ryan Lee	7			Mattan, Lee
8	Luke Henghan	8
9	Ghislain Yaro	6
10	Harry Wright	7
11	Jamel Mattan	8
12	Freddie Brooks	7
14	Colin Hoare	6
15	Josh Brown	6
16	Sam Arhin	6
17
		/10

The Woods' team started this pre-season friendly really well. However, whilst dominating possession with our short passing game, the first opportunity came to Evergreen when the referee awarded them a generous penalty for a fairly innocuous push by right full back Dan Thomas as he was defending a diagonal cross from the halfway line. But justice prevailed as the Evergreen penalty taker hit the crossbar with his effort.

Woods continued to play some excellent attacking football, keeping possession but it wasn’t until the 30th minute that they finally made the breakthrough when Massih Mirzai and Harry Wright combined to break down the left flank, the latter got to the 18 yard box and cut a low driven pass diagonally across the box. Jamal Mattan came in from the opposite flank and drove the ball into the opposite corner  of the net from the edge of the box with an excellent left foot strike.

Northwood made four changes at half time which made them slightly unbalanced, however they kept the ball well without really threatening the opposition, who were very competitive and more than a bit physical – committing lots of fouls ,some of which the referee didn’t pick up on, in fact giving lots of free kick against Woods.

It was one of these free kicks that the opposition undeservedly scored from when the ball deflected in off Ed Hatcher, who had been excellent in defence throughout the game. But Northwood came back into the game after they made more changes and eventually Ryan Lee scored from just inside the 18 yard box, passing the ball into the net past the keeper after good approach play.

This was very pleasing, and the players take a great deal of credit standing up to quite a battering but staying true to playing good quality football.

Team performance 8/10

Report: Mick Bradshaw & Dave Fox