Management thoughts on a King Cup victory.

Posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Mike says –

“First of all we were all very happy in the Spartans dressing room after yesterday’s victory at Ferguson Park. It puts us in our third semi final this year and we can look forward to an exciting last two months of our season. It was a result we would have gladly taken before the game but what of the performance and was it a missed opportunity?

I wasn’t happy at half-time as I thought our passing was sloppy on what looked like  a perfect surface. We continually gave the ball away and conceded far too many free kicks near our box. Ferguson Park isn’t the widest and free kicks and throw-ins too easily given away can result in goal chances for the opposition. If I wasn’t happy Sam was even more vocal in his condemnation of our first half performance and to the players credit it was a much better after the break.

This group of players have set high standards after a shaky first month of the season and Sam and I are there to remind them when these standard slip – that is our job.

In the wider picture was yesterday an opportunity lost? As Whitehill and ourselves battle it out for the league title two or three more goals would have given us a psychological edge. As it is it’s 3-3 on aggregate and they can point to any away goal and a sending off which they can say influenced yesterday’s result. We passed the ball much better in the second half even before the sending off  and got ourselves in some really good positions. Unfortunately our decision making and final ball let us down too many times. As I say another two or three goals would have given our boys a lift and sewn seeds of doubt in the minds of the Whitehill boys.  

The King Cup can go on the back burner for now as we turn our minds to our second last league game of the season against Heriot-Watt at Riccarton next Saturday. Hopefully Stewart Fowlie and Alex King will come back into the reckoning but Jorge Vinelli will miss out as he returns to Spain for a few days. The students found it far too easy to breach our defence in the reverse fixture so we wont be taking them lightly, that’s for sure.

More about that game later in the week.”

Mike