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Hachioji Park Monday 11th Feb,
It was an interesting weekend on the football front; first, the surreal prospect of the Premier League adding a 39th game to the league season, to be played overseas and drawn by lots, had everyone desperately thumbing through their calendars trying to work out what had happened to most of February and all of March, for this was surely the stuff of Fools Day. Then City, satisfyingly, turned over United in their own backyard to add to the air of unreality. But things really reached before-unscaled heights of absurdity when visitors logging onto the TML site were confronted by a piece of prose, the only explanation for which could be that Anthony Burgess, miraculously resurrected, is now writing match reports for the TML. If indeed it was a match report - hard to tell, really. A double relegation is surely on the cards for the Vags at the next TML committee meeting on the grounds of wasting the time of anyone who attempted to read more than the first two sentences.
Unfortunately for the relegation-threatened Jets the bizarre happenings of the weekend didn’t extend to victory over title-chasing Hibs. Saitama went down 5 – 1 in a game they were optimistic they could take something from, but by the end should probably be thankful that Hibs were restricted to just the five. It was a feisty game, with Hibs surprisingly (or not, perhaps) doing most of the kicking, including off-the-ball and behind-the-referee’s-back on one unpleasant occasion. There were plenty of ‘verbals’ too, part and parcel of the game and enjoyable if a sense of humour is employed, although quite why some players on a superior team feel the need to disparage their opponents with sniggering, snide comments and abusive language is a bit of a mystery (or not, perhaps).
The Hibs have some brilliant players; fast, skillful and technically excellent, they gave the Jets’ midfield and defence a torrid time slicing through the rearguard time after time, wreaking havoc, causing panic and creating chances. They scored a goal early on following some tricky dribbling and a powerful shot from the edge of the box, 1-0. The Hibs really don’t need any help when in this kind of form but the Jets were evidently feeling charitable and so quickly gifted them a PK, 2-0, and an OG, 3-0. Game pretty much over after about 20-odd minutes. The Jets did attempt to respond, Loren menacing the right-back on a number of occasions, got to the line and squared for the lurking Gildart who was thwarted by a well-positioned centre-half. A few shots were struck and one from a poorly cleared corner was hacked off the line by a combination of goalkeeper and defender, so it wasn’t all one way traffic and despite being 3-0 down Saitama had had their moments and weren’t too despondent at the half, but it was going to be a long road back.
The second half saw a change of formation for the Jets and long periods of dominance for the Hibs. Saitama were chasing shadows and that they only conceded 2 more and actually managed a consolation via Gildart, probably doesn’t reflect how good the Hibs were in the second half. It was a torrid night for Saitama and the only consolation is that we have now played the Hibs (and BFC) twice and can now look forward to some games where we might actually get a touch of the ball every now and again!
Report by Rob Keating
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