MATCH REPORT;Madison 2 Southington 3

Second Half Collapse Buries Madison

You know the scene; it happens almost every week. A tired and stressed out coach is dragged out in front of the cameras to explain how on Earth his team managed to lose a game they were so easily winning. The usual well used axioms that are trotted out at this point are something like " our luck ran out" or " the big decisions started going against us" or, the oldest one in the book; " It's a game of two half's, innit? " As if stating the bleeding obvious is a way out of the nightmare result..... Well i guess we all know how that feels today. After a first half of fantastic passing and assertive play with two fabulous goals that easily could have been four or five, Madison fell apart in the second half sliding to a horrible defeat. What were the excuses? Well it was clearly a game of two half's and the big decisions started going against Madison but... the main reason is they gave up passing and fighting for the ball. The slick, fast moves that led to the first Madison goal when Dejan found Jorge with a delightful ball, who then passed to Henrique who slid the ball to Roniildo, who neatly flicked the ball past the goalie, were all missing in the second half. Even the direct to goal play that gave Madison their second goal, when Kevinho's long kick out landed at the feet of Jorge who slammed the ball into the net for Madison's two goal lead, disappeared completely from Madison's repertoire. In the second half this productive style of play was replaced by an ineffective, lacklustre approach devoid of imagination and coherence. Southington took advantage of this sea change in the game by first scoring a goal ten minutes into the second half that could have been prevented if Madison had cleared their lines. This defensive lesson didn't sink in because Southington scored their equalizer from a similar set of circumstances when the Madison defense could not clear the ball out quickly enough and allowed an overhead kick to sail into the net. At this point in the game Madison still had chances to score but nothing was working and they were clearly running out of steam and luck.
However, despite the woeful inadequacies of the second half it was left to the sunglass wearing ref to execute the coup de grâce with the now obligatory ridiculous decision we see in almost every game, allowing a blatantly offside goal from Southington to stand as the winning goal. The Southington forward couldn't get any more offside if he had tried, but as we have seen many times in the past, the quality of refereeing decisions in this league leaves a lot to be desired. The bottom line is that Madison let a game they had in the bag escape from them and they have to learn the tough lesson of finishing off teams when they are so dominant.

MAN OF THE MATCH; Dejan had a great first half as did Jorge and Henrique but it just has to be the referee for his match winning performance for Southington......