YFC 2 – 2 PCOV

YFC continued their unbeaten run this season with a home tie against a strong PCOV side. YFC almost gave a goal away in the opening minutes with some sloppy play between midfield and defense however were let off by a poor PCOV finish. Despite YFC controlling the game for the majority of the time with some solid passing and good ball movement within the defense, midfield and attack, YFC were unable to break the PCOV defense and score any first half goals. Both Antonio Rabelo and Adam Jennings created problems for PCOV, however quite often found it difficult to defeat a very physical PCOV midfield. PCOV rarely caused any real problems for the YFC defense, who were communicating well and didn’t allow PCOV to create any real chances. The best chance YFC created in the first half was almost put away by Chris Bland, however his shot after a very tidy through ball was placed inches past the left hand goal post resulting in a miss.

The second half painted a similar story, however PCOV capitalized on two defensive errors to allow PCOV two very lucky breaks which resulted in two goals for the away side. YFC however didn’t let their heads drop. Coach Glynn Roberts made three changes in the second half, bringing on Oleg Benesch to replace Pierce Joneson on the left, also bringing on the mighty Arnie Emmerson to replace Peter Rossing at the back and replacing Nima Farahmand with Masa Egami in left midfield. This re-energized the YFC defense, midfield and attack significantly and at this stage YFC began to put serious pressure on PCOV on both the right and left hand sides. With 4 minutes to go YFC created a corner opportunity. YFC then pressed hard by moving defensive players into the box which paid off immediately with Dan Ranking slamming an unstoppable header into the back of the net. 2 minutes later YFC who were continuing to put pressure on a panicking PCOV side, created another corner and this time Arnie Emmerson stepped up to head the ball into the back of the net essentially tying the game in the last minute. With 30 seconds to go, both sides pushed hard to win however by then the game was over as the ref finally blew the final whistle. Overall it was a fair result for both sides in what appeared to be anyones game from the start.