After a year of near abstinence, Vets 1 returned to the vets 2nd division with a good convincing win.
New captain Nando with Vice captain Cian were tested with finding a few players in the run-up to the season opener, but managed to put together a strong team - 4-4-2 - with John Stemple and Benoit Priest making their vets1 debuts in midfield, and Cian & Brian Lewis starting a new forward partnership. Roger and Nando teamed up in central defence.
Playing on the Rosieres grass (& bobbles) for the first time in several seasons, we took a wee while to get used to the feel of the pitch, with Cedric and Julio seeing more of the ball on the left than John Stemps and Brian Morris on the right in this early exchanges. After 20 minutes the game suddenly exploded into life, when one of the Ecusson midfielders turned round and punched John - after he had brushed against him while running for a through ball. The ref had no choice but to give a red card.
A few minutes later we managed to make this advantage count, when Brian Lewis cleverly won the ball back from their keeper and laid it back for the on rushing Hoskins to bury past 3 immobile defenders. 1-0.
In the second half, we upped the pressure, managing to run thru their defence at regular intervals. On one such occasion, Cian ran through and was able to stick the ball in the back of the net. 2-0. Five minutes later, it was Cedric who broke through and managed to beat the keeper (although Cian was happy to make sure it went in). 3-0.
To be fair to Ecusson, they kept going, and Mark Adams had a couple of good saves to make in goal. Then, the ref gave them a soft penalty after Nando breathed too close to their centre forward. Mark got a hand to it, but could not keep it out. 3-1.
By this stage, Benoit, after an impressive debut, had made way for Johann. Our regular surges from midfield saw further breakaways and a series of extremely tight offside decisions go against us. However, 5 minutes from the end saw our best move of the game, with Lewis getting thru on the wing, and centred it right onto Cian's head as he burst into the box and nodded it neatly over the keeper.
Speaking after the game, captain Nando was very positive. "It is great feeling to start the season with a convincing win and yet I am sure we can do even better. There were many positives, especially the lads that came in during the week. Best of all, we scored 4 fantastic goals and have found a pair of strikers that will assure us the goals we could not deliver last year. I thought Roger was brilliant at the back and fully deserved his MoM award."
