We come from behind to beat 4th in the league

We are buzzing. We expected a difficult game today, after the 6s played Newbury a few weeks ago and lost heavily. 4th plays 14th. It was going to be a struggle. But we won! The Mighty7s won!

But it didn't start well. Newbury had an experienced team and early ball went their way. With an early PB time, we had not woken up and looked lethargic and not firing on all cylinders. The run of the ball was not with us, as nearly every clearance went to a Sonning foot. It felt like we were going to be permanently defending short corners. Newbury scored an early, but possibly the slowest shot I've seen from outside the D, taking a slight deflection and gently rolling past the goalie to score. Even the refs couldn't quite believe it had happened.

This however seemed to galvanise us into action. We started to string a few passes together, we started to press a bit closer and the runs started to come together. It was however still end to end and Newbury continued to get into attacking positions. A second Newbury goal soon came. I feared the worst. But there were moments of good Sonning possession and we were rewarded with a short. With Charlie injecting to Oli O, a dazzling shot hit the backboard. Come on Sonning.

Half time was a turning point. Oli gave us a short talk to sharpen up our tactics and positional play and it made all of the difference to us.

In the second half, we held the central ground, Newbury made more mistakes, we had time on the ball. It was a completely different game. Some great interplay between the midfield was followed by a great ball through to Charlie, run a defender and then the goalie and, yes, it was 2-2.

It wasn't all going our way and Newbury continued to press forward. A couple of short corners to them were well defended, but we were much quicker on the counter. Some great attacking play followed and we were rewarded with our second short. This was once again converted into a 2nd goal for Oli.

This was followed by the longest 15 minutes I have played, not helped by a green card for arguing with the ref! But we largely kept hold of the ball and ran the clock down. It felt like we had knocked the stuffing out of them. Tim, in goal, commented at his boredom in the second half - I'm sorry for him, but shows how well we played.

It was such a great feeling when the final whistle blew! An unexpected victory, but testimony to the fighting spirit of the team. Not too many mentions of individuals this week, but actually that is because it was an all round team effort and all contributed so well.

MOTM: Charlie
DOTD: Hugh (harsh and we thought of better contenders after the vote - mentioning no names (***)

Next week is a 12:30 PB away at Abingdon. I suspect that numbers may be an issue so please let your Captains know if you can help us out.