GMWF 65+ League - Match Day 2 - 15th March 2018

By David Holbrow

A day full of challenges........

“It’s hard not to be a little disappointed but we should remember that the first priority is to enjoy ourselves, and be thankful we can still take part in our version of the beautiful game.” John Myatt, Team Manager

The Wanderers knew it was going to be a tough day when they set off in pouring rain and suffered major delays in their trek along the M62 for the second round of matches for the Greater Manchester 65+ Walking Football League held at Heywood Sports Village.

Matches commenced at 11.00. The rather fraught players arrived with minutes to spare and quickly got changed whilst the first games got underway - glad that we were not scheduled to play until 11.15.No time for our customary warm up, it was straight into a series of back to back games with us playing each of the remaining 6 teams in the League in matches of 10 minutes duration.

The squad welcomed the return of Dave Cossins and skipper John Myatt but was still missing Eddie Gibson (regaining full fitness) and were also without John Jones and Mally Wood. The Magnificent Seven included 3 of our over 70 contingent all eager to ‘strut their stuff’ in preparation for the Over 70 Cup Competition to be held at Heywood at the end of May. No respite between games John decided to allocate 4 games each to the over 70s with the under 70s playing all 6.

The Squad:

Dave Alexander
Martin Burrell
Dave Cossins
John Myatt
John Rooke
Paul Waggett
Michelle Walker

Fortunately we saw little rain during the matches, but the previous downpour left the pitches wet and made it difficult to control the ball. Our training session held on Monday produced some noticeable improvements regarding passing and overall composure on the ball, but we were unable to find the net in any of our games despite rotating striking duties and support players. The two Johns had a couple of decent efforts with Michelle and Waggy firing in regular efforts too.

Our Results:

Blackpool Senior Seasiders drew 0-0
Rochdale Striders drew 0-0
Rochdale Strollers lost 0-1
Preston North End Senior Whites lost 0-2
Vintage Relics drew 0-0
Tameside Striders drew 0-0

On a positive note, our defeats were to two of the early pacesetters and out of a total of 12 games played to date we are unbeaten (and have kept clean sheets) in 10 of the 12 games. We have lost just 2 games conceding only 3 goals.

So, if we can find our scoring boots we can look forward to improving our position during future fixtures.

We await details of other team results as it may well be that goals were again hard to come by.

John Myatt
Team Manager

Updated 11:10 - 31 Aug 2019 by David Holbrow

Where next?

SY 60+ League 2017/18 - Month 4 - Doncaster - 21st March 2018 "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." Henry Ford
FA People's Cup - Round 1 - Leeds - 24th February 2018 “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

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