[JonInMiddleGA]

August 3, 2012 (evening)
Blyth at Dalbeattie Star (South Scotland) - Friendly

Oops, forgot I had another friendly scheduled. Good thing, as we needed to trim up our match fitness.

GK - Hartley
D - Martin - Antwi - Mellish - Hoy
MF- Matondo - Morrison - Vipond - Whiteley
F - Chinthengah - Stamp
Subs available - Cast of thousands
4-4-2 Standard

Halftime - A nice save by Hartley just before the break kept things scoreless. Chinthengah & Whiteley have both picked up yellow cards. We've been outshot 6-4, mostly due to subpar passing (69%) that's given them 55% of poss.
Sub Phillips for Whiteley, Knight for Hartley, switch to Counter strategy

50:45 - Martin makes a nice tackle to start a counterattack ... long ball up to Chinthengah who works his way to the arc and fires ... GOAL ! (1-0)

53:00 - Sub D'Laryea for Hoy

60:30 - D'Laryea runs down a loose ball deep, wheels and fires a long pass ahead to Stamp ... he's in the right channel, crosses for Phillips near the far post ... steps into the box and shoots ... GOAL ! (2-0)

Sub Abraham for Vipond, White for Stamp, Kulsten for Martin, Slaughter for Chinthengah (Matondo to F)

70:00 - Sub Sawyer for Morrison, Breckin for Antwi, Groves for Matondo, switch to 5-4-1 Counter

89:00 - Nixon takes a long shot for DS ... a slow roller that takes a little skip & somehow gets past Knight and into the net (2-1)
Switch to Contain as we try to survive 4 mins of added time

Fulltime - Got a little dicey there at the end but worked out okay. But just okay. We outshot them 13-9 despite only 46% poss. Didn't pass well, especially from the backline. Did just enough to win.

Nice to see Phillips (MOM 8.1, 1 goal, 1 assist) have a good game, Chinthengah (7.4) scuffled quite a bit but the goal pushed his performance up, Antwi (7.0) played solid defense. Vipond had some awful moments in the first half but rallied (6.8).