MATCH REPORT; Newtown 4 Madison 2

Abject performance by Madison leads to deserved defeat

Newtown ran out worthy winners against a badly performing Madison team today. They gave the visitors a footballing lesson as a strong Newtown side tore them apart with excellent passing and movement to gain revenge for their opening day defeat to Madison. The first quarter hour of the game had started fairly evenly but this competitive beginning was undone by some woeful defending by Madison as they allowed an unmarked striker to head into the net from close range for the second game in a row. Although Madison equalized shortly after this, when a slack pass back was picked up by Tom the Coach and slid past their hapless goalie, they could not keep any momentum going. Newtown were stronger than Madison in almost every department and were soon back in the lead when their opening scorer ran unhindered from the halfway line to stroke the ball past Kevinho. Matters were made much worse when some poor passing from midfield allowed the Newtown team to attack in numbers scoring a third on the stroke of half time. Some strong words at the break were used in an attempt to get the Madison team to compete more aggressively for the ball. They were second to every ball and slow to react all over the field. The defensive line were getting pushed further and further into their own half and a significant gap was appearing in the midfield that the Newtown team was only too happy to exploit. The incredibly slack passing by Madison continued into the second half and culminated in a perfectly weighted, but disastrously misplaced, pass to two of the Newtown strikers who wasted no time in deciding which of them would slam the ball past Kevinho for their fourth of the game. A demoralized and alarmingly lifeless Madison team were now playing for pride and with 9 minutes left in the game another defensive error by the Newtown team allowed TJ to score a second goal to make the score at least look respectable. The last minutes of the game were all owned by Newtown as they had the freedom to take shots from every angle and distance at the Madison goal. Good goalkeeping and strong defensive clearances prevented Newtown from emphasizing their superiority with further goals. The referees whistle was a welcome relief for the beleaguered Madison team as they continued their desperate away form. Lessons have to be learned from this defeat if Madison want to win even a point away from home. The loss of the strong running and possession play of Carlos is now very obviously affecting the teams performance and we hope he can get back to fitness soon. The team also has to have a more effective subbing system deployed during the game as players were left on the bench for large chunks of the game even though it was clear there were players struggling with form and fitness on the field. The great thing about football is that we can put this all behind us next week by beating Guilford at home. Can't we ?



Man of the Match; Rob "el gutso" Heckel. Even though it was tough to pick out a man of the match in such an appallingly bad game Rob actually did all the simple things right during this game. He very rarely got himself, or the team, in trouble and probably made more successful passes than most on the day. He even managed to pass to Roniildo using his backside. It was that kind of day.....