STEELE SCORES SCREAMER
Might as well get this over with. Renwick lost their second match in a row yesterday afternoon at a windswept Boucher Road, to the Queen’s Northern Ireland Supporters’ Club. We got off to the best possible start as with only seconds on the clock Phil smashed a loose ball into the box from the right hand side and AJ (playing with a hamstring injury and not able to run much) rose to head us into the lead. The first 5 minutes were great, with us all over them, but again we couldn’t hold our lead for long. A long ball from QUB bounced over Paul and Foyle SU stalwart Alan Steele lifted it over Joel into the net, their first shot of the game. After this, Queen’s were right back in it, and most of the rest of the half was spent seeing out long throws (their team was pretty big all round) but the defence did well and the marking was better than it’s been recently. Disaster struck 5 minutes before half-time however as Barry was adjudged to have handled the ball in our box, to conceed our third penalty of the season. Joel got a hand to the resulting spot kick but couldn’t keep out a goal which came as a hammer-blow to Renwick. At the other end however we had basically no chances, Mark had a shot wide at some stage but that was it.
This pattern continued in the second half, and the killer blow came around the hour mark as a Renwick clearance hit one of their players in the face and Londonderry lad Steele hit an absolute screamer on the (half?) volley into the top corner giving Joelerz absolutely no chance. The plan had been to move to 3 strikers, but either miscommunication between Houllier and Evans or an injury to Sam brought an end to that. Our best chance of the half came when I played the ball across to Sam who was free in front of goal, but he chose to dummy the ball to Phil rather than shoot, and Phil’s shot was saved by the keeper. Apart from that there was nothing to write home about, and probably the most frustrating match we’ve played ended, leaving us with a bad end to the year.
On the bright side however, our new kits arrived this morning and are looking well, with the old kit receiving criticisms in some corners for the recent performances. The new kit, which we are undefeated in, will make its debut against the ministers in January. However, anyone wanting to score the first goal, pull off the first save, or do the first nutmeg in the new kit will be disappointed as Joel took great pleasure in doing all of the above to me at a training camp in Knockbracken this morning.
Steve (seriously, that looks like it’s straight out of Pro Evo!)
Strobert’s gorilla impression came in handy
The birthday boy flights in a corner
RENWICK: Joel, Jonny, Strob, Steve, Piemonger, Phil, Conor, Mark, Simon, me, AJ (Samuel, ht) (r: AJ, 60)