Storm 0 Peninsula 3

It's taken me a couple of days to think-through what to say about Saturday's game.

Once again I'm left with the feeling we didn't get what our play deserved. But you need to score goals in order to win games and overall we just didn't do enough to trouble their keeper. Peninsula, on the other hand, took three of their five chances and defended in numbers when not in possession of the ball.

Our first fifteen minutes was excellent. Movement off the ball was good, we kept possession well and we created a number of good opportunities. Unfortunately many of our shooting opportunities came against a tightly-packed Peninsula defense, so good "looks" at the goal were few. This seems to be happening to us quite a bit recently, so perhaps it's up to us coaches to tinker with our formation so that we're not always finding ourselves with our back to goal with the ball.

Their first goal, when it came, felt a little bit like a sucker-punch as I think it was the first time they had the ball in our end. However we can only blame ourselves for the lack of communication that lead-up to their goal. The 5-10 minutes that followed wasn't very attractive either and was perhaps some of our poorest play this season. Our marking was poor, as was our energy and it seemed a Peninsula player was first to almost every ball. We looked a bit disjointed and out-of-sorts, probably from the shock of their first goal. Two more Peninsula goals in quick succession gave us a mountain to climb and it could have been worse had Mia not scrambled away another effort when their player looked favourite to score.

To our credit we stuck to our game-plan and ended the first-half with some good sustained pressure in their end. We then carried that momentum into the second-half. Our tempo and passing became quicker and more positive, we showed more desire to get to and hold the ball and the result was that more scoring chances came our way. Many of our chances came from wide positions - Lily's long-range effort a notable exception - so that's something we need to work on.

So even though we had them on the back-foot most of the second-half a combination of poor shooting and Peninsula doing a good job of getting behind the ball meant our effort wasn't rewarded. Oh well, there's always the next time.

Next up is Gorge this Saturday at Bullen Park, so the opponents don't get any easier.

See you at practice Tuesday!