Under 17's lose to St. Patrick's

by Jonathan Spiteri - 21st January 2013

On Sunday Birkirkara Under 17's were beaten by St Patrick;s through the odd goal in five at the Zabbar Ground. The final result might look a bit tough on our boys since they had some good spells during the game, but they paid a high price for not taking most of the scoring opportunities they created and also for losing concentration, thus allowing the opponents to do the damage.

As one could foresee, the Stripes were the brighter side once the game got under way, and the first ten minutes were characterised by a shot hitting the “home side's” crossbar and another two shots which whistled past the goal posts ending just wide. Until mid way through the first half, our boys were playing some very good football and they were a joy to watch.

Unfortunately for them, the aim of this sport is to score more goals then you concede, and St Patrick's, who started to make life difficult for our midfielders, struck on the counter attack, punishing the YellowReds and leaving them trailing by one goal at the end of the first half.

Birkirkara knew they did not deserve to fall behind as till then they had produced the better passages of play, and were determined to get back into the match immediately. In fact, following a short corner, Ryan Cutajar was on hand to place the ball into the back of the net.

The game turned to be a very hard fought battle in the middle of the field and, although Birkirkara held the initiative, it was once again the boys from Zabbar who went back in front as their forward went past two defenders before slotting the ball home. This did not demoralise our boys though, who rolled up their sleeves and found the equaliser as a great pass by Andrea Curmi released Ryan Cutajar who notched his brace.

Once again though, the Stripes' were undone by another solo effort which was not properly dealt with by the defence. This goal was then followed by the sending off of a Birkirkara player, as Gabriel Borg collected his second yellow card after handling the ball, thus receiving marching orders.

The lads tried hard to take at least a point out of this match, but their efforts turned out to be futile and the final whistle saw St Patrick's obtaining a surprise win.

Mr Marko Glumac, the Nursery's Headcoach, hope this match will serve his boys a lesson: “The boys had to show more respect to the opponents and work harder for every ball. In football, when you don't give it all you can get beaten by anyone. Although we created enough scoring opportunities, we committed too many mistakes that allowed our opponents to punish us at their home ground. I hope we learned so that we do not repeat the same mistakes next week”.

The Under 17s' next match is versus Melita at the Rabat Ajax Ground in Mtarfa on Sunday 27th January with kick off time being 11.00am.

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