Rude Awakening

A.C Panache started the first game of the post season with an insipid 2-4 loss to The Temple Inn.

Both teams were coming into the league as cream of the crop challengers but only The Temple Inn played with the positivity associated with winners.
Controlling the game, being more aggressive in winning back the ball, bolder in attack and playing more like a team than a bunch of sewn together fashionista fabrics, The Temple Inn spent the first 20 minutes dominating play, shots, possession, tackles, public opinion, the stock market, the weather, they basically dominated like The Undertaker dominates Wrestle Mania!

Despite this, A.C Panache held them scoreless through packing their own half and basically kicking lumps in a Vinny Jones meets Mrs. Brown kind of way. After 20 minutes the scoring finally opened through a shot that deflected off Brian Butler's granny like tackle and his half block drove the ball  into the ground only 5 yards in front of Aaron Buckley in goals, where it bounced up over his hands which were down to block the original shot!

From kick-off A.C Panache once again lacked crispness in their passing and the game fell into the usual pattern of all out attack vs panic defending. Then out of the blue, with a touch of brilliance,  James Slowey picked up the ball, dribbled past the first up tackle and rifled it into the net from midfield. He demonstrated physically what must have been going on mentally, something like "screw this bollix acting, I'm just kicking it into the goals, isn't that all we have to do!"

Half-time 1-1, and A.C Panache having gotten away with an atrocious first half promised to play much better in the second half. But promises easily made are easily broken, and they didn't play well. In fact they got worse.  So much worse that The Temple Inn would have found it harder playing against the Douglas U12s girls netball team!

Apart from Aaron Buckley in goals who really did play well and in fairness would probably make the U12s netball team if he wasn't overage and the wrong gender stopped about 7 million shots. Unfortunately no one else stood up and took control of the situation for A.C Panache and yet with 10 minutes to go it was only 1-3 when James Slowey struck again with a goal that was more or less ping-ponged into the net and no one could possibly know who scored it but he was the only one near it so he gets it by default, leaving just one goal between the teams!

Despite only needing just one tiny, small, little goal in the final 10 minutes to get something out of the game, and being incredibly lucky to be so close after playing so woefully badly A.C Panache still didn't pull the finger out and even combined to concede another sloppy goal with a few minutes left. Just to make sure they didn't play well at any point of the game!

Had this been a horse race, the glue factory would be getting most of the A.C Panache players for raw material. 

Final Score 2-4
Scorer: James Slowey (2), OK so maybe he wouldn't get glued, but everyone else should have been!