20/9/15 – Wyrley Wanderers v’s Wyrley Rhinos

Result – Wanderers 7 – Rhinos 2;

So for our second league game we welcomed the Rhinos to Willenhall Academy for our first home game of the season.

Match Report –
We started the game brightly and pressed the Rhinos back into their own half from the very first minute. We used both our wings well in the early stages and forced a number of early corners, one of these corners wasn’t cleared properly by the Rhinos and it fell to Liam Parkin who smashed a fantastic, unstoppable right foot shot into the top left hand corner. 1-0 to the Wanderers! Straight from the re-start we continued to press and kept the ball for a good period and the 2nd goal came half way through the half. Following some good work down our right side, Owen Dale picked the ball up and hit a beautiful cross into the box with the outside of his left foot, it found Lewis May who had timed his run perfectly and beat the oncoming keeper to the ball to make it 2-0! We now seemed in control, but Rhinos started to push forward. One long ball over the top of our defence caught us out and although Phoenix managed to recover, he mis-cued his clearance and ended up planting a great shot into the top corner of our net for an unfortunate, but great own goal! 2-1. 🙂 Although the boys were a little shocked by this they picked up the tempo straight away and soon restored our 2 goal advantage following some great work from Josh Lees. Josh used his blistering pace to latch on to a great through ball and round the keeper and tap in to make it 3-1. A few minutes later and it was déjà vu as Josh made it 4-1 with an identical goal. Just before half time Josh grabbed our 5th and completed his hat-trick with a neat finish into the bottom corner. The second half started the way the first finished with us pushing forward, and saw us create several good chances for Josh/Lewis and Jack, but we failed to convert and add to the score. The tempo and intensity then dropped for a period where both teams defended well, but this was broken when a great ball down our right put Alfie Morgan through to bravely beat the defender and goalkeeper to the ball and lob a great shot into the net to make it 6-1. This sparked us into life again and saw us create several more chances with Josh hitting the woodwork twice and the Rhinos keeper making some fine saves. Our final goal was once again created by Josh who’s shot came back off the post for Jack Chard to follow in and finish off to make it 7. The final 10 minutes of the game saw us lose our concentration a little and allowed Rhinos to have a couple of half chances, and in the final few minutes a through ball beat our centre backs and provided the Rhinos striker the chance to calmly finish and make it a final score of 7-2.

Stand out and “Man of the Match” performance from Josh Lees, with a superb all round display which resulted in a Hat-trick and 2 assists, plus 2 off of the woodwork.

Well done to all the team, another good performance and it means we have had a great unbeaten start to our season! Let’s keep it going, next up away to Great Barr.

Joe, Jason and Ronan.