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Hodogaya, Saturday 17th March, The first snow of the year had to be at 9 am on Saturday in Hodogaya, 15 minutes before kick-off between Jetro and the Swiss. Both teams were suffering from the time/location penalty imposed by the league, one of the Swiss players had to get up at 4 am while Jetro only started with 10 grim looking souls. With the way the Swiss have been playing recently, any advantage was appreciated and they jumped on top quickly. Jetro was trying to play with 3 across the back but there were openings galore. The first 20 minutes were all Swiss as a little pressure produced easy chances. The first goal came from a nice through ball to Kirk which resulted in a 1 on 1 vs. the keeper. He was back pedaling and didn’t know where he was, giving Kirk enough time to find a smooth patch on the beach to knock it in for a 1-0 lead on 10 minutes. There were a couple of more chances like that in a short amount of time with Yuji blasting at the keeper and another 1 on 1 missed. Fortunately, before Jetro’s 11th player arrived, Aoki produced a beautiful pass over the side back for Kirk to control and knock past the keeper into the lower left corner. 2-0 on 20 minutes and that is the way it would finish.
The ground didn’t allow for much quality in terms of the footy played. Jetro’s play did improve once their bulky forward showed up and he held the ball up well. He did nearly get away for a 1 on 1 in the 2H but Raffa caught him just outside the box and he blasted the free kick wide. The Swiss did have a couple more opportunities with Aoki blasting straight at the keeper after some nice build up and Karl had a nice volley tipped wide in the final 5 minutes. Luckily for the Swiss, we’ve made it through a tough weekend in terms of player availability and look forward to a week off before our next encounter with the Celts.
Report by Cap'n Kirk
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