Walter Pless on Football

Clarence United 0-1 New Town Eagles

By Walter Pless
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Clarence United were dealt a huge blow just before the game when both their goalkeepers were ruled out through injury. Central defender Ben Parker had to don the gloves and it was easy to see he had never played in goal before. As he himself joked just before the kick-off, his experience as a goalkeeper was limited to the warm-up before the game.

Clarence were let off the hook despite Parker’s inadequacies in the opening minutes by poor finishing.

Whitehall decided to go it alone at one stage and his shot was smothered, with Koroma unmarked to his left.

A lucky ricochet fell to Rybak early in the game and he smashed the ball into the empty net with Parker stranded. That was to be the only goal of the match.

Just before the break, Emmanueli, who had trained with Eagles in the summer, hit the woodwork, while seconds later he produced a dangerous low cross from the right which was cleared on the line by Savage.

Clarence’s big chance came in the 4th minute of the second half when Wass thumped Walsh in the back and floored the substitute striker. Mr Phillips pointed to the penalty spot, despite Telega’s protests.

Stevens appeared far too casual in his approach and it surprised no-one when he placed his spot-kick wide of the right-hand post.

Eagles’ keeper Pitchford was lucky not to concede a penalty in the second half when he elbowed an opponent in the box, but none of the officials saw the incident.

With 7 minutes of the half gone, Whitehall breached the Clarence defence and, with only the goalkeeper to beat, shot high over the bar.

In the closing minutes, Pitchford did very well to deny Bremner.

The three points put Eagles in equal second place with Kingborough Lions United in Group B of the Premier League section of the Summer Cup tournament.

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• Clarence United coach, Andrew Brown, said:

“It was our first game of the year and I thought we played quite well.

“Patchy to be perfectly honest with you, but I thought we played quite well.

“The final pass let us down on a number of occasions, and a missed penalty.

“It doesn’t help when you lose your number one and number two goalkeepers before the game, but to be fair, I thought Ben Parker did a serviceable job, and that’s about as polite as I’ll get about BP.”

• New Town Eagles coach, Ian Parker, said:

“I thought we were a tad better than we were last week.

“We knocked the ball around really well in the opening parts of the game.

“I was a little bit frustrated because we were making basic errors, which you can accept because we’re only two games in, so we looked a bit disjointed at times.

“We can certainly work on a lot of things.”
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Clarence United: Parker; Cannamela, Ling, Bremner, Lewis, Nicholson, Emmanueli, B Hamlett, Hunt, Stevens, Barabara (Substitutes: Undy, Huigsloot, Walsh)

New Town Eagles: Pitchford; Clark, Koroma, Leszczynski, Rybak, Vernon, W Savage, Whitehall, Wass, Wiggins, S Telega (Substitutes: Stingle, Shackcloth, Wakefield, McKeown)

Goals: Rybak 8

HT: 0-1

Ref: C Phillips

Att: 200 (South Hobart, Saturday, 23 February 2008)