Petone 8 - 1 thrashing

Better late than never….

With the promotion this season to division 5 the Stallions have taken perverse pleasure in the contrasting rituals between ourselves and other teams in the grade.

The strangest ritual witnessed by the Stallions, as we arrive at the ground 10-15 minutes before kick-off, is seeing opposition teams running around the field, kicking balls to each other, running drills, etc. Often these activities start more than 30 minutes before kick-off. This season the Stallions’ version of warming up is putting on our strip - even the taking of corner kicks and shooting at the keeper is seen as unnecessary fluff that is a distraction to winning football games.

However against Petone this relaxed approach went a step too far. With only 10 players present just minutes before kick-off Rauru was starting to sweat. He hadn’t miscalculated had he and there were actually more people away then he thought? A few quick phone calls and we were assured that the 3 missing players would be arriving at some point during the game – just not in time for kick-off.

Gus was on the bench so he thought there wasn’t much point turning up before half time; Chris was still learning that, being a family man, if you want to turn up on time you plan to leave at least 30 minutes earlier because something always comes up; and Heath, who said he was just pulling into the car park. A quick look at the car park did not support that statement – we were a bit concerned as Heath has been known this year to turn up to random football fields thinking that was where we are playing.

So knowing that more people would show up, hopefully before the final whistle, we confidently kicked off with 10 men. After the exciting pre-game antics the rest of the match pretty much went off without a hitch. When in possession our distribution and movement was very good – switching the play, quick passes and making Petone work for it. On defence, once Heath arrived 5 minutes or so after kick off, we pressured Petone and although they were willing to play the ball out through the back and avoid route 1 football they didn’t do much with it.

There were so many goals it’s hard to remember what happened. The first two from Rauru and Bakky were headers which is strange considering Petone’s centre backs were tall timber. Bakky’s goal in particular, a crouching waist high header from a corner (cross?), showed that although the defenders may have been tall their positional awareness was woeful.

And so it continued, Stallions cruising along scoring goals at regular intervals until it was 5 – 0 at half time. This game was aiming for a Stallion all-time high score. Unfortunately the second half was a much dourer affair. Gone was the movement and support for the ball carrier, people became tired and Petone started to come into the game. Despite this the Stallions still put 3 more goals away and missed several more scoring opportunities.

The clean sheet was ruined however when the Pony gave away a penalty for handball in the box. This occurred when, on a rare Petone break, the ball was driven into the box from the right wing. Coming forward to chest it away the ball came on quicker than expected and hit both upper arm and chest (that’s my story anyway and I’m sticking to it).

Final score 8 – 1. Other notable news – Lloyd’s family will never attend another of his football matches after the promised drink and hot chips didn’t eventuate with the clubrooms being closed.