WHY BOTHER GETTING OUT OF BED?

Subs

• Barnes for Palmer
• P.Barber for Abbott
• Foster for M.Barber

I was dreading writing this but I am actually looking forward to getting a few things off my chest……Here goes!

• Why is it that I cannot remember the last time we won a tight match?

• Why can I never remember us winning a game after we have gone a goal behind?

• Why is it that when a game hangs in the balance and we need to role our sleeves up and grind out a result that our key players go missing during matches?

I am getting really fed up with telling people how “We played so well, BUT LOST, in the last minute” and I am fed up of hearing the talk of the “potential” that this team has to do “great things”.

The days have gone when we just turn up to games to make up the numbers.  We have always been a team who “On it’s day” can push the top teams close but will always get pipped at the post.  That needs to stop right now.  I no longer turn up to play the Coleshill’s and the Hanburys thinking that if we are lucky we may get something out of it.  I turn up expecting to win every week.

If you take a look at the names at the top of the page you will see the reasons why.  We don’t find other teams in our division who can boast a Mark WILLIAMS.  I have rarely come across a player with such neat control and deadly finishing as Michael HALLORAN.  We never see a team with the understanding that we have between Scott STANLEY and Michael CARDALL.  Then if you add to that the pace and threat of Matt BARBER and Dylan MCLOUGHLIN.  The guile and craft of Jim BARNES and Alex MYTTON, the sheer guts of Jack FOSTER and the dedication of Henry ABBOTT, Graham HILL and Ryan STOKES. 

I often look into the faces of parents who think that I am too honest with the players when they have not performed.  All I can say is that whenever we go down like we did Sunday (without a fight), I go home and feel down all day.  It really does ruine my Sunday.  If anybody doubts this just ask Dawn.  She normally gets the silent treatment.

The question I am asking you is how many of you go home feeling like that?  I seriously doubt that many of you even give Olton another thought until Thursday evening.

Lakeside beat us because they wanted to win that game more. Plain and simple.  They won every tackle.  I doubt many of there players would get into our side on ability, but on guts and desire I’d take every single one of them tomorrow.

I was the 1st to congratulate all of you when we lost to Coleshill.  You gave everything you had that day and nobody could blame anything other than sheer bad luck for the result.  This week I didn’t see any of the qualities I saw in you that day.

If you get beat for 70 minutes by a team who is better than you then nobody will ever question the result, but you dominated the 1st 20 minutes of this match and the very second we conceded a goal you all looked like you were ready to go home.  I don’t understand why it is such panic stations when we concede.  Against Knowle you were 2-0 up and as soon as we let a goal in we collapsed to 4-2.  Against Coleshill you lead 2-0 and they got a goal back and within seconds it was 2-2.  In boys football we are going to concede goals.  It happens.  It’s life.  We have to get on with it and make sure that we have scored more than them by the end of the game.  And in all of games we have lost I believe we have been better than the opposition.

We must establish why that most of you do not believe we can win these games?  Eagles, Coleshill and Lakeside wanted to win more than we did. 

Being out played is not a crime, Being out battled is.

Steve