BLACKS UNDONE BY PENALTY 22-08-2009

MYS FESTIVAL OF FOOTBALL 2009

MYS BLACKS 1 EDINBURGH CITY 0
MYS BLACKS 1 SPARTANS 0
MYS BLACKS 0 TRANENT COLTS 1
MYS BLACKS 2 MYS BLUES 1

After a poor start the week before at the Windsor tournament, the black stripes played some brilliant football and came very close to winning their own club's first-ever festival of football.

Against strong opposition, they tackled powerfully, showed superb commitment and played some terrific passing football. In the first three games, they carved out maybe 15 good chances in all and in truth, should have won the first game by four or five goals. A combination of poor finishing and superb goalkeeping from Edinburgh City's exceptional keeper kept the score to 1-0.

The second game followed a similar pattern and we deserved our first-ever victory over Spartans. (I know Scott and Lloyd scored the goals in the first two games, but can't for the life of me remember which was which!) Thanks to Spartans for helping us out by attending at short notice after the Windsor let us down badly by failing to raise a squad.

Tranent Colts had won 1-0 with a last-minute goal against Spartans then crushed Edinburgh City 5-1, so we played them needing a win to top our group. Again, we had the best of the game but the Tranent keeper made two or three fine saves and we missed one other great chance. We lost the game when we failed to clear a corner and a goalbound header was pushed out by Connor's hands! I was glad to see Tranent score from the kick as it wouldn't have felt right for them to have missed. We could still have come back but it wasn't to be.

The blue stripes finished second in their group (after beating Dunbar, drawing with Longniddry and losing to Aberlady), so we played off aginst them. Jason hit the post from long-range but it was 0-0 at the ten-minute half-time break., Blair Millar scrambled a goal to put the blues 1-0 up but Lloyd nipped in to score after a great through-ball by Connor and then Scott poked home the winner from close range.

All in all, we played more consistent and better football (over a total of 80 minutes) than we perhaps ever have done before. Credit to all theboys for wonderful effort and superb play. In the final, Tranent Colts comfortably beat Aberlady 4-1.

Squad: Cammy, Connor, Jason, David, Jack, Lloyd, Seth, Callum, Scott, Brandon.