Week 5 round-up
It’s been a great first five weeks of football so far, and the league is as competitive as its ever been with each team already suffering at least one loss. The gap between the teams has closed and bar a couple of hidings, most games have been extremely well contested with no fewer than 6 of the 20 games played to date being decided by a single goal.
Game 1 of week 5 looked like one such game as CrownEroon and Scouting for Goals went back and forth for the first half, and the scoreline sat at 3-2 for a while before a burst of goals put the Crown ahead 6-2. Scouting pulled back to 6-4 and looked like they could get something out of the game with 5 minutes to go, but a late seventh for the Crown killed off the game and saw the champions return to the top of the league. Scouting are still a threat to everyone in the league, in particular when they can pair both Geraint Dyment and Ryan Jones together to add goals to the team.
FC Snorkel pulled off a great comeback in game 2 to nick a 4-4 draw with bottom of the league team, The Vaders, who were looking for their first win of the season. They had to settle for a single point in the end after throwing away a healthy 4-0 lead, with Luke Howells at the heart of Snorkel’s late rally. There have been signs that The Vaders are improving in the last 2 weeks and will hope to pick up more points against Scouting for Goals next week in a bottom of the table clash. Snorkel move onto a tough game vs the Park Arabs next week, who seem to be clicking into gear after a faltering start.
Taking the previous league leaders’ unbeaten record, the Park Arabs superbly managed their 3-2 victory over Jimmy Sevilla, using all their experience to see out the slender lead in game 3. Jimmy looked as solid as ever and produced some good attacking moves too, but ultimately couldn’t claw back the Arabs who controlled the tempo and remained a goal up for the majority of the second half. Both teams remain in striking distance of the top spot, so will be looking to keep up with the leaders next week. Jimmy have a battle of the best defences with Honey Badger, which should be a great battle but don’t expect too many goals.
Our final game of the evening saw the Badgers keep up their impressive form, shutting out the Young Arabs 2-0. The Badgers have built on previous years’ solid defence by adding goals in Rhys Dyke, who has won an impressive 4 man of the match votes in 5 games, along with scoring 7 goals. The Young Arabs have found goals surprisingly hard to come by, despite some great attacking talent. They remain a tough team to beat, though, and will surely get better. They’ve suffered the last two weeks at the hands of two physical teams and can look forward to playing another footballing team next week when they face CrownEroon.
The individual stats are starting to take shape, too, and there’s familiar names at the top of the goal charts already with Geraint Dyment, Jack Thomas and Lewis Kingdon leading the way once again. Its still early days, though, and there’s a handful of other contenders to enter the race for top scorer, such as Dylan Llewellyn, Rhys Dyke, Chris Lewis and Kai Steadman to name a few.
Good luck to everyone going forward, on to week 6 we go…