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Ah,
spring is here. Light evenings, the smell of freshly
mown grass, the gentle tweeting of tiny birds across
daffodil laden fields. Nobody ever mentions the gale
force winds, hailstones the size of marbles and
torrential downpours do they? Well, unfortunately for
DSW FC last Tuesday resembled the latter. During
pre-match warm up – yes most of the team (Wattsy, are
you reading this?) that’s most of the team were early –
concentration levels started to waiver. Bob complained
of an ‘ice cream’ headache after being hit by too many
hailstones, Paul thought he’d wet himself and Adam used
James as a wind break. Wattsy stayed in his nice warm
heated car listening to the radio.
Fortunately for us Grappenhall were in a similar frame
of mind – why on earth are we here? Wattsy was still in
his car. For the first ten minutes nothing particularly
happened. Enter Adam from the sideline. He took
inspiration from the double rainbow that stretched over
Broomfields. Latching on to a defence splitting through
ball from Neil, Adam finished with great aplomb. It was
only a matter of seconds though for Grappenhall to
react. DSW on mass decided to watch the ball (or was it
the rainbows) instead of the two Grappenhall forwards
who ran through and left Paul no chance.
As the
sun finally made its way through the heavy storm clouds,
DSW started to take control. David showed nifty
footwork to restore the lead. Andy also threw away the
‘sugar plum fairy’ title with some quality defending
which involved him throwing his body in front of a
rasping effort (or did he slip?) and, even more
surprising, a couple of shots that didn’t go over the
fence. Wattsy finally blessed the pitch with his
presence in the second half. He did everything in his
power to score, including giving the opposing keeper a
couple of extra tonsils. Unfortunately for Wattsy, his
goal was not forthcoming. It took James to score the
third with an excellent team effort which tore the heart
out of Grappenhall’s defence. As the game progressed
Grappenhall closed the gap with a shot that spun so
bizarrely Paul could only palm away and watch trickle
into the net. DSW’s dominance was never in doubt with
David finishing the game off by scoring a fourth.
David
continues to dominate in front of goal and that’s a good
thing too. An extremely dodgy back pass in the dying
seconds nearly let Grappenhall in for a third. It was
only Paul’s agility and massive hands that kept them
out. Overall this was a quality performance going
forward with excellent front running by Adam and David.
However, slack marking and ball watching, leaving Neil
too much to do will cause problems against better
opposition.
The Djimi Traore award
for back passing: David Dodd |
