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Sat 31 Oct 2015
Southgate County  FC
Southgate County 2nd Team
K Middleton (25'), J Nelson (45'), A Georgiou (85')
3
11
Mayfield Athletic II
Southgate County 3 - 11 Mayfield Athletic

Southgate County 3 - 11 Mayfield Athletic

Damien O'Brien2 Nov 2015 - 13:31
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Southgate hammered by rampant Mayfield

Southgate County 3 – 11 Mayfield Athletic
(Middleton, Nelson, Georgiou)

Southgate faced a Mayfield Athletic second team who thus far had a similar league record to ourselves although they had lost 5-1 to leaders Parms; whom we lost to a late goal 2-1. We were fairly confident beforehand but were probably a bit too relaxed warming up and were joking around a bit too much. This wasn’t helped by the referee arriving 20 minutes after the scheduled kick off time; typical the one week we have 14 ready to go on time.

Our pre-match confidence was smashed to pieces in the first 20 minutes by which point we found ourselves 5-0 down. I can’t go into the detail of the goals, not out of bitterness, but we conceded so often I cannot remember one goal from the next! What I will say is that some of our defending was terrible, we were being out-done in the basic departments and were just much much slower than Mayfield. We were allowing Mayfield to carry the ball forward far too easily, defending starts from the front, but our back-line defending was also really poor. That said some of Mayfield’s attacking play was absolutely outstanding, their main striker was making arcing runs that we couldn’t deal with, great through balls had us all at sea and their finishing was excellent. After 20 minutes and already 5 up Mayfield subbed a couple of their top performers which was a little odd. Maybe a coincidence but there first team, 6 divisions above us, didn’t have a game on Saturday…anyway we pulled a goal back when Ken Middleton hit a great 25 yarder into the top corner and then we had a decent 10 minute spell. However we soon found ourselves on the back foot again and Mayfield just carved through us far too easily to score another 3 goals in about 5 minutes. Jermaine Nelson pulled a second goal back on the stroke of half time to make it 8-2.

Obviously it was a devastating half from our point of view. As an individual I was embarrassed and as a team we were embarrassed. Some of our play had been shocking. We spoke about trying to not lose the second half and showing some pride by increasing our work rate and making it tougher for Mayfield. We competed much more for most of the second half. For the first 25 minutes it remained goalless; we were working much harder and it showed, I am under no illusions that Mayfield will have taken their foot slightly off the gas and they hadn’t brought back on their strongest players yet but nevertheless we deserve some credit for that period. We were unlucky not to score when Ken Middleton saw another great 25 yard strike rebound off the underside of the bar. We then shot ourselves in the foot by inexplicably giving the ball away in a dangerous position and were clinically punished. Mayfield made a couple of changes and scored 2 more excellent quick-fire goals, finishes of the absolute highest quality. Anthony Georgiou pulled another back late on with a good finish to make the final score 11-3. It could have been mistaken for the rugby score.

Overall a terrible and disastrous day. We were very poor throughout but Mayfield were very impressive too and a couple of their players could clearly play at a much higher level. The combination of their quality and our poor showing led to the cricket score. Results in these divisions unfortunately do look very odd at times and it is very frustrating. Ours and Mayfields other results so far pointed to an even game but the team we came up against on Saturday should walk this division. We deserve some credit for our second half performance; it would have been easy to throw the towel in but we played with fight and pride which is not easy to do at 8-2 down. Man of the match was Anthony Georgiou whose work rate was excellent throughout despite fighting against a lost cause.

Team; Deering, O’Brien, Thirgood, Bellinger, Coehurst, Middleton, Afolabi, Wright, Hall, Georgiou, Nelson, Hammond, Mensah, Frame.

Match details

Match date

Sat 31 Oct 2015

Kickoff

14:00

Meet time

13:00

Instructions

Please meet at Clubhouse for 1.00pm
Team overview
Further reading

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