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Ruby Murrays VS First Ball
0 : 1
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Time:
8 am
Tournament:
Cup
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Report:
A very frustrating day all round for the Rubies. The omens were bad from the start. An 8.30am kick off in Kowloon Tsai the week after Easter was always going to make things difficult in terms of putting together a decent squad. That said, and despite Abbiss arriving on the back of a 12 hour lunch the day before, the Rubies showed up on the grass stadium pitch looking and feeling confident. Things got off to a very good start with the Rubies dominating the play for the first 15 to 20 minutes. The defence of Abbiss, Fitzy, Clayton and Houghton looked very solid and were passing the ball around and building well from the back. Abbiss and Turner were combining well down the right and on a number of occasions we managed to get the ball down the flanks and put in a couple of good crosses. Martin and Mawds were creating good space for Gel and Kennedy to run into and all was well. That was until out of the blue halfway through the first half, First Ball broke down the left and somehow and inocuous cross made it to their centre forward who managed to turn and divert a shot past leverick to put them 1 nil up against the run of play. The following 15 minutes leading up to the break saw the Rubies lose their composure after some appalling refereeing decisions and dirty tactics by First Ball. At the end of the first half the Rubies were lucky to avoid going a further goal down when one of their lads got onto the end of a corner only to be denied by Leverick who, at close quarters, pulled off a blinding save to keep the ball out of the net. The resulting melee ended up in a good old fashioned bundle which ended with Fitzy and Clayton being yellow carded for standing up for the Rubies!
The second half was a much improved performance. Despite contnuous goading by the oppo who were reverting to really cheap dirty tactics and despite some appalingly biased refereeing, the Rubies got their composure back and started to play some decent football. Dan Turner continued to threaten down the right and Gel and Kennedy were dominating in the middle. All the while, Fitzy marshalled the defence well and picked up any minor threat that First Ball posed up front. We were well up for it by now and it seemed only a matter of time before we would equalise. Halfway through the half, we thought the breakthrough had come. Gel and Mawds both broke through and were two on one with the keeper only for the linesman to flag for offside. Then the more blatant one when, following some good work down the right, the ball fell to Gel in the middle and he bundled the ball past the keeper and into the back of the net. For no other reason that the fact that the ref was a good friend of the First Ball lads, he disallowed the goal. For the rest of the game, the Rubies huffed and puffed, bombarded the First Ball box with cross after cross but it was not to be and we went home thoroughly gutted, not just because of the defeat but because of the tactics of the oppo and the dreadful refereeing which spoiled what could have been a great cup tie.
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