Atholl 1965 Football Club News

Round 2

hi chris, match report from sat....

Far from dejected after a narrow 2-1 defeat in match 1 Atholl went into match 2 with nothing to lose, having already been guaranteed a semi-final berth. Accordingly they began the game with more spirit and tempo and deservedly took the lead after 10 minutes, a popemeister cross being finished with aplomb by Roger the Ringer!

Once again Atholl had taken the initiative but this time, unlike match 1 where they similarly took an early lead, they would have learnt their lesson and......well no actually but that was the plan until Eagles equalised again. Minutes later another glitch in the matrix occurred with a second Eagles goal, deflating Atholl's spirit somewhat. It was only through some inspired keeping from Monk that stopped the 2-1 scoreline from being any worse at half-time.

The final quarter (or second half to you and me) began openly with both teams clearly tiring and exploiting the available space. Unfortunately Eagles struck the first blow to make it 3-1 but Atholl kept plugging away and a succession of set-pieces eventually paid off when Chris headed in from Stu Delaps misslie to make it 3-2.

With 15 mins left it was game on yet again but alas Eagles quickly broke through to score and make it 4-2. It would have been easy at this point for Atholl to just lie down and accept defeat but through more adversity they struck back with a beauty of a strike from Phil, who pinged a first time 30+ yarder over the goalies head. Back to 4-3 and like one of those turds you can't flush, Atholl just wouldn't go away, much to the annoyance of Eagles who must have thought it was game over several goals ago.

Another spate of Atholl corners and free-kicks followed and the equaliser very nearly came but i'm afraid no cigar was forthcoming. And so match 2, like match 1, had finished in narrow defeat, the only difference being the 4-3 scoreline this time around. Despite this Atholl took many positives from both games and can look optimistically ahead to a cup semi and to their remaining league fixtures.