Gresley Rovers vs Oadby Town
This weekend saw our second game of the season against Oadby Town, in the first about 3 weeks ago we were held to a 0 - 0 draw in a well-fought affair.
In the last game Oadby adopted a 3-5-2 formation and to be fair probably played it better than any club that we've faced this season, in that game I changed our formation to match theirs, in hindsight I should have stuck with our more successful formation of 4-4-2, so for this the second game I did.
The players and myself had a long chat before the game, on the subjects of mental preparation, attitudes, passion and above all being pro-active.
To my delight our chat seemed to have worked, although it wasn't a classic first half by their own standards, it was a gritty passionate display.
In a hard working first half that ended 0 - 0, one young lad did light up the ground with his tricks, directness and shear ability, that lad was Bryan Barker form the youth team in only his 3rd appearance with the reserves, great ability and maturity, got to be knocking on the 1st team door within the next 12 months, keep it up Bryan.
Although we missed the usual half a dozen chances in the 1st half, we applied ourselves better than we had done in the last few weeks.
The second half saw some great all round performances from the whole team, but in particular the engine room, or silk and steel as I like to call them Dunny and Zak, they both carried out their roles to full effect on Saturday. Andy kept it simple and orchestrated and Zak dug in, grafted and bossed the middle of the park - well done all.
The dead lock was broken after some never say die running from Kamar, which led to him robbing two defenders and coolly dispatching past the keeper into the bottom corner of the net.
We continued to dominate and missed several more good chances before Liam Hebberd drove a shot past the keeper at his near post, after a solo run. Two nil - it felt like a goal fest, compared to the last few weeks.
Oadby pulled a goal back with a great side foot finish into the top corner from the edge of the box, but I always felt the points were safe and we ran out comfortable winners in the end.
It was very nice to get the win and to score a couple of goals, it was also very pleasing to see several players back to their best, but most pleasing of all was the return of the team spirit and belief that hasn't been around the last few weeks, well done lads!!
Simon Van-de-Broucke
Reserve Team Manager
