Line Up: Hughes – Price (Minorikawa) – Jankowski – Warreing – Erba – Buccialli Lacour (Moccelin) – Van Den Bogaert - Dambre (Jelik) – Michel (Lucio) – Magaud
Subs not used - Dotta, Diaz and Valsechi

What a game. Probably the best team performance I have seen from Latini in a while, Latini as an united front to fight, work hard and play good football on the pitch with loud support from the sidelines. Great performance from all 15 players involved in the game out of which at least 5 players have to be serious contenders for man of the match.

The game started fast and physical as expected neither team holding back in their challenges - a hard fought but overall fair and competitive battle on the pitch. Our midfield ran and worked tirelessly to close down space and ensure Brewerks players were forced into making decisions, making mistakes and knocking the long balls. Overall Latini dealt fairly well with long balls with Gaetan and Darren dominating in the air and strong defending when Brewerks managed to get passed the midfield. The main scare came from a Brewerks freekick just outside the box that was smashed at goal with some venom only to be knocked over the cross bar by our stand in keeper Nick who had a great game. On the opposite end of the field we looked dangerous when going forward Benji made one of his usual runs across ¾ of the pitch leaving 3 or 4 Brewerks players behind only to be denied by a last minute save from the goalie. Eventually some nice 1 and 2 touch football through midfield and a great diagonal ball over the Brewerks defence gave Olive Michel space to run in to and to his credit he made not mistake passing the ball into the net around the oncoming Brewerks goalie - Latini leading 1:0. We created further opportunities going forward and continued to look dangerous when coming through the midfield. Latini went into the half one to the good. Overall just about deserved Brewerks looked dangerous on occasion but overall Latini seemed to win most of the challenges, controlled the midfield and seem to pose a bigger threat going forward.
2nd half we started strong and we got into a good rhythm putting early pressure on Brewerks. Most of the play for the first 15min was in the Brewerks half and we managed to carve out a number of good openings, crosses from the wings as well as short passes and runs through the midfield. However, Brewerks seemed to be able to block the shot or have their keeper in the right space, think there were 2 goal line clearances as well. Eventually the goal would come from an unlikely source – Yann, managed to get hold of the ball inside the box and hit a low shot in the bottom right corner 2:0 to Latini. This was followed by another 2 or 3 good chances for Latini but we could not extend out lead. On the other end Brewerks hit a long ball over our defence and the Brewerks striker got in front to finish off and make it 2:1. Game on as Brewerks felt they still had chance to get a result from the game. They started to through caution to the wind and piled players forward. But our defence was solid and managed to snuff out any potential Brewerks threats. In similar fashion we constantly looked dangerous on the break with a number of players having good chances to restore our 2 goal advantage. Eventually our 3rd goal of the game would come from a move that exemplified the Latini spirit on the day - Yann winning the ball in a hardly fought centre midfield battle and Jun playing a nice ball into Magaud who cheekily decided to chip the goalie from 30 yards and make it 3:1 Latini. Overall our midfield seemed to win most of the battles and continued to be hungry throughout the game combined with an inform defence and 2 goals from 2 of our strikers it was a winning recipe on the day.
Man of the match is a very hard decision – Darren and Gaetan were solid in defence, Raffa had an outstanding match, Yann came on after 35min and put in a great shift, Benji played a great first half and finished it off with a 80m sprint in the last minute that could only be stopped by a poorly timed and bad tackle on the edge of the Brewerks box. However, my man of the match has to go to Etienne for working tirelessly, covering a huge amount of distance, winning what seemed like all of the tackles and making sure that Latini had the upper hand in the centre of the field for most of the 90min.
If we can continue in this fashion we will get some good results. 

Thanks to Brewerks for a very tough but overall fair game. The referee had a difficult job with both sides not holding back in their challenges and a lot of banter from the sidelines but overall the ref and his team did well enough.