You don’t often play the same team two rounds in a row, but when the last row was about 4 months it hardly seems repetitive. So in a quirk of scheduling, Beachside and Eagles lined up for their round one match, after doing the same thing back in April and with no games in between. Playing against nine players to begin with, Beachside did all the attacking early. Eagles attempted to counterattack using long balls, but the Beachside defenders had the advantages of size and number. In some games Beachside tend to favour the right wing as much as the hacks that work for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire do, but with an ascendant midfield, they were making use of the whole pitch, and finding space for attacking runs down either wing. Dangerous crosses flashing across the box and a number of early chances somehow went begging, including one superb short range reflex stop by the Eagles keeper. Eventually Beachside took the lead when Pat calmly slotted his shot into the corner of the net after ten minutes. A goal up and still playing against only ten opponents, Beachside began looking a bit comfortable and allowed hints of complacency to creep in. A lack of pressure or tracking in the midfield allowed the Eagles to make a more penetrating run and put their through ball on the ground. It still didn’t exactly look threatening and appeared to be running out, but Sir Frank Lowy has a somewhat celebrated history of philanthropy; he was obviously feeling generous when he decided to bring down the chasing Eagles’ player anyway.
The resultant penalty (which earnt Sir Frank a $2 fine- billionaires are probably good for it though) was duly converted and scores were level. Not for that long though. Beachside lifted a gear, scoring twice in a matter of minutes and the game was effectively over quicker than Scott Morrison can close parliament (whilst telling us all to go back to work). It started with the Raynoceros living up to his name by charging out of defence and sending a powerful header forward, putting Jonno through on goal. The big ginger didn’t let him down and restored the lead with a neat finish. Moments later, a quick passage of one and two-touch passing through the middle put Lump away on the left and he chipped the advancing keeper with a classy shot to make it 3-1. Despite a tonne of further chances for the Beach, the score remained unchanged for the rest of the half. The second half was less eventful in terms of goals scored, but probably consistently featured better passages of play. Like Scomo returning from Hawaii after the bushfires had already burnt half the Eastern Seaboard, the 11th Eagles player eventually turned up but (also like Scomo) had little impact; as Beachside continued to monopolise possession of the ball the way the richest minority of Australia’s population monopolise its resources. With the team holding its shape better, the defence began to be used more for switching play and overlap runs. Not that there wasn’t plenty of action near the goals too. Jonno ran onto a low cross from Gibbo to extend the Beachside lead to three goals, but it could have been more. A free kick was awarded close to goal for a backpass so blatant it made Angus Taylor’s corruption look subtle. Gibbo smashed it towards the top left corner, but the keeper somehow managed to knock it out for a corner. Soon after, Pat was bundled over in the penalty box, only for Biggsy to gently role the penalty straight to the keeper, who waited patiently until it got there and then collected it without difficulty. A sweetly-timed long range shot from Gaz was denied by the post (for the second time in the game actually) and that was about as close as Beach got to adding to the score further. The game ended with the score still at 4-1. Aside from a few players trying to stage for free kicks (and I thought the referee did a pretty good job of not being sucked in by this) the game was played in a pretty good spirit for the most part. Perhaps this was unsurprisingly given how glad everyone was just to be back and playing. We will see how long that lasts. When you have three gingers (popular consensus is that Dover counts as one) things can’t stay calm for too long.
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