Tonbridge Invicta Under 16's v Orpington Colts

HEARTBREAK

ORPINGTON COLTS 5 TONBRIDGE INVICTA 1

30.03.03

It certainly hurts when your hopes are dashed. This most disappointing loss makes it very difficult for us to win the League now.

A very poor first half performance gave Colts an unassailable lead and despite dominating the second period we were never likely to be able to retrieve the situation.

Let's get the negatives out of the way:-

We simply did not compete with the Orpington side in the first half. They clearly had an enormous appetite for the game, and we were not at the races! This was true right across the pitch.

They did not score a good goal today. We handed them all five and some of the first half goals were the result of total sloppiness. We should be embarrassed about this catalogue of errors!

At half time you would have thought it was a top versus bottom of the table game rather than a top of the table clash! To our credit however, we did come out with a totally different attitude in the second half and we dominated. We created enough to have got back on level terms, but we just couldn't find the net and the Colts keeper was having a "blinder". In fact we certainly should have had one penalty and possibly another, but somehow this was not going to be our day.

We did score when Daniel Powell showed some of his magic to beat three players and slot the ball home. Briefly it seemed we might be able to fight back. But it was not to be and Colts scored another goal late on. In a rare breakaway they won a corner and once again we failed to clear the six yard box and a Colts player was on hand to stab the ball home.

Man Of The Match Andrew Jarrett had a great game and there were some very good second half performances across the team, but we had given ourselves an impossible task by our opening 40 minutes.

Perhaps most annoying of all is that we are a better footballing side than Colts and we succeeded in making them look good. However, we could learn a lot from their hunger for the ball. We have to find some of our own in the remaining fixtures.

There is still an outside chance that other results could make things interesting and we must continue to push for maximum points.

Let's be absolutely determined not to have a repeat of today, lads -- you are better than that!