With Max still recovering from his cruciate ligament injury, the Tigers were further rocked when Ethan failed a late late late fitness test on Saturday morning. With no time to react, Bennett kept his fingers crossed that the other 8 would make the match and luckily that proved the case.
In the absence of Ethan, this was Abhishek’s chance to show his worth to the side and take on the defensive role that both Max and now Ethan, perform so well. To his credit, Abhishek put in his best performance of the season and didn’t disappoint with some crunching tackles and some very important interceptions.
Onto the game itself. Reiss started the day as sub with the others playing in their regular positions. A game against local rivals, Hammers, is always a good one but they still have the sign over us as they are the only team we have failed to beat on any occasion. Unfortunately, today proved to be that way again.
With only a minute or so on the clock, the game exploded into life with Tigers forcing a save from the Hammers keeper. In the ensuing melee, Sam smashed home an unstoppable shot and it looked like Tigers would be on a goal feast.
To their credit, Hammers defended doggedly and managed to repel any further Saints attacks during the remainder of the first half. Half time 1-0 Tigers.
The old cliché, it’s a game of two halves certainly applied to this one. As effective as the Tigers were in the first half, ineffective was their performance in the second half. It was as if somebody had swapped the Saints Tigers with a group of kids who had never met each other before and who appeared to doing an impression of Bambi on ice!!
Now you never try and give Hammers a chance to play football as they can play some delightful stuff. Not to miss an opportunity, they went on to do this scoring an absolute peach of a goal by basically walking through the Tigers ranks to slot past Adam.
The question now was ‘can the Tigers hang on’ as they were in serious trouble a la Bruno v Tyson the rematch. Fortunately, for them, the referee eventually blew his whistle and the parents were put out of their misery. Yes, this was really tough to watch some very talented players perform so ordinarily. However, let’s be upbeat about this, Liverpool take on Chelsea at the Bridge tomorrow and I fully expect a reds victory. NOT!!
Goal Sam
MOTM - Sam