Capital 5....whats the goss ?

Hoping its on a Wednesday night again. There is a mixed weekend and weeknight round next weekend, thought they'd be smart and play us on the Saturday, and midweek, but the draw has you guys on Saturday and us on Tuesday - opportunity missed. 

Our main striker was dropped after missing that 1on1 yesterday...nah he's away skiing so you may have to mark someone else!! :)

So rumour at training last night suggested that one of the Uni lads who scored 2-3 goals against us on the weekend shouldve actually been serving a suspension from his regular Cap Prem side after receiving a red card in the prior round, he appears on the suspensions page on Cap Football website too

Is the club doing something about it?

Was just thinking (and talking to Pretzel!) would be pretty hard to prove unless Uni confess? Got to do a DNA test or fingerprinting!

BNU Reserves 3-2 Eastbourne

We'll start with the ref. LOL. Yellow cards for every single instance of bad language, even if not directed at anyone but oneself. Throw ins incorrectly awarded to the wrong side throughout. Made for really frustrating football.

Eastbourne opened the scoring, think it was from a set piece where one of their guys ghosted right in to about 6yards unmarked and nudged it in. A few mins later we leveled the score at 1-1 after being awarded a penalty. Keeper did well to block it but unfortunately for him he sent it straight back to the taker who headed it in. I think we probably had the better of the opportunities this half, but their keeper did well to get down and make a couple of good saves. We were otherwise pretty wasteful and didnt really get a lot on target. 1-1 halftime.

Second half saw Eastbourne step it up a bit and were more threatening in front of goal than in the first half, and went ahead with what was probably the goal of the match, a nice dipping lob over the keeper from about 20 yards, and to rub salt in the wounds it was a former BNU player who scored it. All i remember from this point on was feeling like absolute shit after being out until about 4am the night before, and with a nasty graze on my knee (see Artificial Pitches - Injuries? - page 4) Eastbourne were really punishing me. To our credit though we kept on battling, had what was a good call for a penalty turned down, and also a bit of a biff involving most of the players on the pitch (surprised at no cards shown - i think the ref was a bit out of his depth here). We created a few scrambles in the box and a couple of them eventually paid off, two fairly similar goals in the late stages of the game sealed it. The win takes us back into 3rd spot with a game in hand against Eastbourne.

A solid physical game played in good spirits, apart from that clash in the 2nd half, but we all shared a changing room after the match and laughed it off. And laughed at the ref. Looking forward to the return fixture.

The next pitch over was a MUCH better match.

Yeah, I don't normally like to publicly have a go at referees, but wow he was a special kind of bad. The funniest was calling your keeper for 6 seconds the first time he touched the ball - it was only about 3. I reckon he was looking for that call, and counted really fast. Another funny one was (I thought) your striker was a good yard offside, he goes through and our keeper cleans him out - goal kick, so he missed 2 calls and both teams can't believe it. 

Actually think that game would have been quite entertaining for a neutral. It had everything. From my point of view though it was pretty gutting to lose it, but proud of the way we played. Looking forward to the return fixture also. 

Yeah the Eastbourne v BNU game wasn't the most spectacular, it was played at a fast pace with lots of counter attacks from both teams.

Agree with everyone re: refree. He was very good on the 'little things', seeing cheeky pushes in the back, shirts being pulled, that sort of things, but when it came to the 'big things', he didn't really get a call right. Point in case being the penalty he gave BNU which, from where I was standing, looked like a striker's foul on our defender, not the other way round. Then late in the 2nd half, BNU had a player taken down in the box after he had rounded our keeper and was going to score....and he gave a goal kick!

Anyway, I feel as though we're having a bad run of luck, in both our game vs Petone on Wed and BNU on Sat we played very good football, with plenty of passing and lots of opportunities up front, yet we came home with nothing on both occasions. 

To be fair, we were missing 3 players from our starting XI coming into this one, but the 11 on the pitch performed very well for the whole 90'. My only regret is that we had so much momentum in the mid-point of the 2nd half (when we went up 2-1) that we should have carried on and I believe a third goal for us would have sealed it. Instead we let BNU back into the game, and once they equalized we gave them the psychological advantage...and ended up losing.

Anyway, a good game all-in-all, played with passion but very little malice. The scrap AJ mentioned was nothing out of the ordinary in my experience, just a little frustration... and even though a couple of players took a swing, no one got punched, and hands were shaken after the final whistle and in the changing rooms. 

Look forward to the return leg at the Bish!

Just wondering is anything came out of BNU's complaint about Uni allegedly fielding an ineligible player last week? 

We're playing Uni on Tuesday, just curious.

Havent heard anything, but havent been at training this week re: my knee. Will find out tonight tho

^^^ you guys lost to Petone....bit of a surprise

Not sure what happened as wasn't there. although not really surprised. we're not going to have a full strength squad for the rest of the season due to injuries and players going up to the first team.

Western Suburbs 12 - 0 Brooklyn Palace last night.  Looks like that puts us equal on points at the top with Miramar again and only one behind on goal difference.

Big result for us.

You MUST have scored with that scoreline mate?

Nah, I subbed myself off so someone else had the chance to complete their hat-trick.  Team man.

^^ Brooklyn coach said no.....so no rolling subs....we are fond of it though. It's one of our secret weapons

We do it if both teams agree and there is no ref....it hasn't happened every week.

Accies beat Eastbourne 3-0 last night. 

They schooled us in a similar way they did when we played them last time. Their 3 in the middle of the park controlled most of the possession and we were happy to play counter attack. They scored two crackers, one from a good 25mt and another one on the volley. Third goal came courtesy of our general GK.

We didn't really deserve much, but again we had some good chances in the first half, but their GK did very well to keep us scoreless. 

Wow...there really is a massive log jam in the middle now. Naenae drew with Wharfies too.

I think you'll find it isn't supposed to happen in 6 either.  We only do it if the other team agress.  And the main reason we do it is so that everyone gets more of a game.  At the end of the day, we are a social team so it's much easier to keep everyone happy if you can roll on and off subs.

I stand corrected.

I wonder if CF will cancel/transfer games before tomorrow night?
It'd be great to know if aren't going to play earlier in the day so we could plan accordingly.

I can't see Eastbourne v Marist going ahead at Kilbirine Park given the shocking weather we've had all week.

Why did I get the impression it was turf? 

Yeah, you'd think they'll just cancel whole grades tomorrow. 

I know (at least some) college Rugby is cancelled already, Im hoping we will be too. Dont really want to travel out to Naenae to be honest...

I know we say this everytime the weather is this bad, but i think this is the worst in a long time haha

If you're at naenae, you'll be cancelled. 

We (Eastbourne) got a spanking from Suburbs today. Not even sure what the score was.

^^^ 10-0. Tough conditions with a heavy pitch...good result for us going ahead of Miramar on GD.

What the heck happened with BNU losing to Marist 10-0??? AJ? 

We also took one from Marist. 11-0 i think.. Worst game ever, came off after about 20mins where i went over top a marist player for a header, fell and smashed the back of head on ground. Turns out those artificials arent all that soft if your falling head first from height

edit: first team have taken all of our players. We're digging into Cap 6 just to get a squad together now. And now we've already got guys saying theyre not going to show up after yesterday.

^^^ Yikes, that's a big turnaround huh? The Cap 6 team are top of the table too right? Interesting times for BNU

shouldn't BNU as a club be helping this team to field 11 players? they must have quite a few teams below it (I suggest you fold your Masters 1 team)

We're managing it at the moment, its just a shame we're never able to maintain the same squad from season start to season end. We usually start good, but then finish poor.