|
Misato, Sunday 22nd April, On a windy but beautiful day at Misato, Lions were playing their last game in their first TML campaign that was plagued by below par performances due to lack of keeper.
The opponents this time were WS Clash who were 3 points ahead and 8 goals better than Lions.
Lions revived their season and started playing as they should’ve been and went into the last game on the back of 2 wins and a draw. A Lions 4-0 win would make them level with WS Clash on points, but ahead on goals scored (same GD).
Lions were missing ex-captain Gaafar Somi, the magical Afro of Abubakar, and others, but still had a strong 11 out.
WS Clash went into the game by choosing to play with the wind in the first half, but all their plans went to shambles after 4 minutes or less when their offside trap failed and allowed Ken Hersche in on the end of a through ball, to calmly slot beyond the helpless keeper.
Lions defended strongly against the wind, and a few through balls saw Omar twice in on goal, shooting wide, and straight at the keeper on the second occasion.
Ken also had a chance when the ball skimmed beyond WS Clash’s Sid, but the ball got stuck under unexpectedly and a hurried shot was saved by the keeper again.
First half could’ve been more!
Second half, Lion’s striker Ahmed Gaafar was flagged offside on various occasions, and when Tatsuya was flagged offside by the linesman for other players, ref Paul realised the linesman was not fully aware of the ‘not interfering’ rule.
With 10 minutes to go, a clearance from the Lions defence saw Ahmed Gaafar on the end of the ball, running from behind the halfway line to break an extremely high offside line by Clash.
Needless to say, Ahmed does not miss one-on-ones, and slotted calmly past the keeper to make it 2-0.
Shouts from Clash were then ‘Don’t let them score 4!’, and that actually did not affect the Lion’s game as they kept pushing for more, only for the Clash keeper to make some heroic charges to stop a couple of possible one-on-ones.
A last gasp attack saw 4 Lions against 2 defenders, with Zohair doing everything right, but score! He played one-two passes with others, went past the defender, and curled the ball round the helpless keeper, only to see the ball scrape the wrong side of the far post.
To be fair, Clash had a couple of long rangers, mainly free-kicks from Sid, but the experienced Aki (from KantoCelts), made the saves look easy, managing to keep the first clean sheet for the new born Lions team, and sealing the 3rd win in the last 4 games, totalling 10 points out of a possible 12.
Lions are determined to improve on this form for next season and climb up to where they should’ve been, at least within the top 4!
Report by Hussein Shehata.
|