Gloucester 0-5 Potters Bar
Gloucester’s A Squad came up against a fast and skilful Potters Bar side in their opening game, discovering over the course of sixty difficult minutes the standard of ‘A’ Team representative football.
The visitors moved the ball with pace and precision, with the hosts unable to establish any sort of possession during the first period. A mixture of determined defending, fine goalkeeping and some good fortune enabled the city side to reach the interval with just a single goal against their name, but within five minutes of the restart, the Londoners had extended their advantage to three.
To their credit Gloucester enjoyed more possession from then on and while the visitors remained the better side, both Lawson and Blacker drew fine saves from the Potters Bar keeper.
Two further scores in the final four minutes though gave the visitors a comprehensive margin of victory and left the Gloucester players initially very disappointed with the eventual outcome.
While the second half improvement in performance, if not the scoreline, was an overall plus, there were also individual positives on which the players should focus, as it is these things that they will be trying to replicate next week. ‘Think what you did well and think about doing more of it,’ is a thought process well worth contemplating.
Meanwhile, the GPSFA Chairman, despite sponsoring the season’s opener, missed the game as he’s currently on a two-week Mediterranean cruise, apparently searching out a number of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He was probably at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on Saturday afternoon, as the e-mail three of us received from his Samsung device in the evening suggested. ‘I have every confidence in each of you,’ it began. ‘But....’ it concluded.
Gloucester: Moroney; Lynam, Mclean, Chamberlain; Wilkes, Blacker, Jones, Blackburn; Smith. Subs: Lawson, Liggett, Clifford.
The visitors moved the ball with pace and precision, with the hosts unable to establish any sort of possession during the first period. A mixture of determined defending, fine goalkeeping and some good fortune enabled the city side to reach the interval with just a single goal against their name, but within five minutes of the restart, the Londoners had extended their advantage to three.
To their credit Gloucester enjoyed more possession from then on and while the visitors remained the better side, both Lawson and Blacker drew fine saves from the Potters Bar keeper.
Two further scores in the final four minutes though gave the visitors a comprehensive margin of victory and left the Gloucester players initially very disappointed with the eventual outcome.
While the second half improvement in performance, if not the scoreline, was an overall plus, there were also individual positives on which the players should focus, as it is these things that they will be trying to replicate next week. ‘Think what you did well and think about doing more of it,’ is a thought process well worth contemplating.
Meanwhile, the GPSFA Chairman, despite sponsoring the season’s opener, missed the game as he’s currently on a two-week Mediterranean cruise, apparently searching out a number of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He was probably at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on Saturday afternoon, as the e-mail three of us received from his Samsung device in the evening suggested. ‘I have every confidence in each of you,’ it began. ‘But....’ it concluded.
Gloucester: Moroney; Lynam, Mclean, Chamberlain; Wilkes, Blacker, Jones, Blackburn; Smith. Subs: Lawson, Liggett, Clifford.
