Padiham Saints J.F.C

Great Harwood Rovers 6 -1 Padiham All Saints

Mark chose to use an experimental 3-5-2 formation for this friendly game, and although the scoreline looks like a heavy defeat, the lads played quite well in patches and they have noticably improved over the summer training sessions.

A shaky and nervous first 10 minutes for the lads saw us go 2 down from goals we shouldn't have conceded. Great Harwood have some good players who have played together for several years already and finished 2nd in the Blackburn league last season. Early on they were given the space to pass the ball around quite well and made our defenders work very hard in those first 10 minutes.

After this the midfield began to click and put together some nice moves and Carlton scored a cracking goal following some excellent build up play. A defence splitting ball from Danny came soon after which put Brad through, but the Great Harwood keeper was out quickly to prevent an equaliser. Alex made several excellent saves as both teams started to play good attacking football. We could have easily gone in level, but at half time we were 2-1 down.

The second half started nervously just like the first half and our defence struggled to clear the ball on occasions which lead to three more quick goals for Great Harwood and effectively killed the game. However, the lads continued to make some chances and Mark was near a few times with long range efforts. Dan also had an effort which hit the side netting and Josh went close with an acrobatic header.

Great Harwood scored another goal, as they made use of their 4 or 5 subs and our lads tired towards the end as we only had 1 sub. But they were still obviously enjoying playing and all worked hard for their team-mates to the final whistle.

The referee's Man of the Match was Mark Heys.

Well done lads. Wins will come if you continue to work hard during the games and training.