Real Tuesday FC

HotScots 3 - 1 Real Tuesday

After a gap of fully 8 years, the Real made a return to 11s action with a game against our old mates the HotScots. The venue was the newish Edinburgh Leisure 3G pitch out at Malleny Park in leafy Balerno.

With there being no sign of Julius as kickoff approached, we had to scupper Andy's original plan to start him on the right wing. Gregor, due to play at centre half, moved forward into midfield with Joe slotting into the starting backline.

The game got off to the worst possible start, a HotScots attack down their right wing ending with a low shot that eluded Lahcen and ended up in the left hand corner of the net. Five minutes gone, 1 goal down.

We rallied after that, a run by David ending with him picking out Mouad in the HotScots box with his cross. Nothing came of it, sadly.

We even managed a shot after 15 minutes, Campbell's effort going wide.

We conceded another goal on the half hour mark after Gregor was caught in possession (or fouled, depending on your perspective - here's ref Andy's take: 'Definitely caught in possession, I'm not having my refereeing impugned!') on our bye line, to the left of our goal. Before our defenders could get organised, a low shot had squirmed past Lahcen into our net. Two nil to the HotScots.

Mouad got us back in the game 10 minutes after that, his neat close range finish making it 2-1 after 40 minutes.

We started to ring the changes at this point as our substitutes had started to appear despite the best efforts of Lothian Buses to delay them. Hugh came off for his traditional spew, prompting a reorganisation of our backline, Gregor replacing Hugh at centre half. Ally also came off for a breather after putting in an excellent shift, Alae and Mohamed taking over the two central midfield berths.

Jackson replaced Momo on the 45 minute mark and started an excellent shift up and down the touchline, creating a chance for Mouad just after coming on. He also linked well with Julius, Aidan, Archie and Dom after they all came on early in the second half.

Alae came close to making it 2-2 at the end of the half, a curling shot from Jackson bouncing back off the post to give Alae a close range tap in that must have been harder than it looked from the touchline. Andy, as you would expect, immediately asked Gregor if he had been giving Alae finishing lessons before the game ...

Mohamed managed to flatten the diminutive HotScots keeper early in the second half but Taylor was mercifully unharmed and went on to make some crucial saves over the course of the second half, commanding her area well and remaining alert to incoming shots. One of those saves came from Julius five minutes into the half, our first German player by then calling the shots and driving us forward from central midfield.

Lahcen was called into action shortly after that, diving low to his left to push a shot wide of the right hand post.

We made more changes as the second half wore on, Alae coming on for Joe and Mohamed replacing Ally, both of the Moroccans having come off for a breather earlier to let Julius and his mates get on.

With just a few minutes left, the HotScots made the result certain, a low shot squirming under Lahcen's body to make the final score 3-1.

As Jon pointed out afterwards, we were probably the better team for the middle 50 minutes of the game, while the HotScots were on top for the first and last 20 minutes of the game. We were still figuring out our formation early on and were basically knackered at the end of the game - our incessant substitutions during the second half also caused a bit of confusion as to who was playing where. Despite that, I gather the HotScots management weren't best pleased at how close we ran them with our rather makeshift team, which underlines the amount of effort all our players put in on the day.

While this apparently wasn't the strongest HotScots lineup, they were still pretty good, with an excellent midfield and (as stated above) a great keeper. It was great to see our old mate Neil playing on the left wing for them - despite being old enough to play for the Real, he put in a great shift and caused us no end of bother until we decided who was playing out wide for us. Most of his team mates were considerably younger than him - and us, which makes our performance all the more worthy of praise.

We have a chance for revenge on 12th September, already penciled in for a rematch. Start preparing your excuses, chaps!

Bill

Match Stats

Result	Lost 3-1
Sequence	1-0, 2-0, 2-1 (half time), 3-1
Scorers	Mouad
Cards	None
Team	Lahcen; Joe, Hugh, Jon, Iain; Mouad, Gregor, Ally, Momo; Campbell, David W
Subs	Alae, Mohamed, Julius, Aidan, Archie, Jackson, Dom (all used)
Referee	Andy did the first half before heading to the Leith San Siro for a League Cup game; one of the HotScots did the second half.
Attendance	Gaffer Bill plus a load of HotScot hangers on
MoTM	Going to cop out and go for a team award here - for us to run a well drilled and battle hardened HotScots team so close despite never having played as an 11s team before was pretty bloody impressive - well done, all! Special mentions to Andy for pulling the team together and for agreeing to ref despite his gammy finger and the absence of a whistle - and to Julius for a) playing and b) bringing his four mates along. Campbell and David also deserve plaudits for putting in a solid shift up front during the first half despite a distinct lack of service from our positionally challenged midfield.