MATCH REPORT VALLEY D VS. Elite B

Sunday morning saw 15 of Damage’s finest rock up bright and early at bloody 9am to face yet another squad of much younger players who were sitting at 3rd of the table and who, unlike er hem… Wongy (refer to photo attached)… had probably adhered diligently to Carrie Lam’s 10pm drinking / socialising ban.

Pre-match briefing from Coach Kelsey was simple: (1) keep the high press; (2) whenever Elite switches the ball, we slide together as a team to defend and (3) midfielders: get the bloody ball to the strikers!!!

First Quarter
As soon as the game started it became apparent that we needed to contend not only with our opponents but also the punishing heat despite the mega early start. Sensing that their relative young age may give them an edge over us in these circumstances, Elite started aggressively from the get go by making several attempts to break into our D via their centre mid and centre striker. Fortunately for Damage, on each of those occasions, Vulture and Jonno (welcome back ^^) did well to observe the old Damage philosophy of stopping the ball and the player by trap or hack (like Munzy says: "Either one may pass, but never both!")

In response, Damage tried several times to directly ping the ball from our midfield (Coco and Gareth) to Mudge, Ced, and Suhail who were relentlessly leading in and away from their defenders However on each of these occasions our passes were intercepted at the last second by Elite’s defence (who were also pretty solid).
Damage was eventually awarded a PC for its efforts but despite being able to pull off another fine Mudge / Suhail deflection routine (c.f. Q4 of Match Report with Footy Club), Elite B’s keeper managed to stick a toe in the way of the ball and goal. Bugger.

As the First Quarter went on Elite B began switching their play up by attacking our flanks (rather than down the mid). This unfortunately turned out to be the chink in our armour which Elite was able to capitalize by dispossessing us in our 25 before carrying the ball into our D and scoring from a lucky strike.

Damage responded immediately by our strikers (Ced and Dan especially) making run after run into Elite B’s D and our mids (George and Dangerous especially) holding the ball for longer in order to make better through passes to our strikers. This eventually paid off when George (?) managed to ping the ball into Elite B’s P Spot area and Mudge managing to create just enough commotion for Coco to flick the ball into Elite B’s goal!

Q1 ended 1 - 1

Second and Third Quarter
The Second and Third Quarter was very much a stalemate between Elite and Damage as the defence in both teams were bringing their A game. At the back, Mikey, Wongy, Jonno, Vulture, and Flemmo did well not only in absorbing the pressure from Elite’s strikers, but (Mikey, Vulture, and Flemmo especially) also ran forward at every opportunity to support the midfield (Vulture I think at one point even made his right-mid debut for Damage!).

In the middle, George, Gareth, and Dangerous were handling the ball with much greater care and were often able to hold possession long enough to pick out good passing options (whether forwards or back) as opposed to simply trying to pass through Elite’s defence.

Up front, Mudge, Dan, and Suhail did their best to and lead into space by peeling off from their defenders but the tight man-marking from Elite proved just too stubborn for us to penetrate. However true to Damage’s spirit, whenever Damage lost the ball up front, our strikers were quick to run back, set up, and on several occasions force an early mistake from Elite’s left and right backs who were their notably weaker players.

While, as expected, Belgian Gee once again had an excellent game saving PC after PC (including one goal line clearance with his stick), special mention must go to Ced who was basically running his heart out to be part of every attacking / defensive play there was. Whenever there was a 50-50 (or even a 20-80) challenge, you could bet on Ced giving it all, winning the ball, passing it, and then running forward to support the counter attack. Ced, if you are still short of a nickname, I think you should seriously consider taking on “Beep Beep” as being your team name going forward!

Fourth Quarter
The first half of the Fourth Quarter saw Damage dominate possession in Elite B’s half but, again, failing to generate results in their D. The closest I think we got was when Wongy, after creaming two Elite B defenders on top of their D, almost managed to thread a through pass to either Gee or Suhail (?) for a clean deflection before being intercepted in a last moment by Elite B’s center half.

As the game went on and we approached the second half of Q4, both the heat and fatigue had all but sapped the energy from our attacking play and Damage saw itself being predominately on the defensive (with the exception of Dan and Gee making one or too chance breaks).
Both Jonno and Flemmo became our rock in defence with Jonno especially who’s last ditch defensive hack on several occasions managed to stop Elite’s strikers being clear on goal.

The last seconds of the game saw both (1) an Elite striker stopping his own team mate from scoring by actually deflecting the ball away from our goal; and (2) Elite hitting out post right before the final whistle.

Q4 wasn’t our finest hockey, but it did the trick.
Damage ended the game with another draw against a top team.

Key Takeaways
One thing we did super well this week was that despite the dubious calls from the umpires and the gruelling heat, we all managed to keep our shit together and did not get ourselves booked for silly tackles or talking back. You can almost look back at the 2 moments in the game when Elite B had a player yellow carded, first, for kicking the ball and second, for talking back as probably being the difference between them squeezing a win from us and this draw.
Also, as we enter summer time, please make sure you try to get as much rest and fluids in you as possible before and during the game. I ve always taken our team motto of “Once Damage Always Damaged” as being metaphorical only and would hate to see otherwise.
Training is on Thursday and another game this Sunday.

Go Damage!
- written by Coco -