Johnstone v St Benedict’s 21/9/15

The first game of the league season for the ever-keen squad saw a home tie and a ‘derby’ against St. Benedict’s at the sports hub.

First issue – deal with the kit clash.  Both teams in green meant a mad scramble to find an alternative.  The blue kit was unearthed, but the team are clearly facing  a sock crisis for the season.  An arrangement of green, blue, black and dark blue rugby socks was not ideal, but game on nevertheless.

The first 20 minutes saw the ball permanently in the St Benedict’s half of the field.  Some good individual play from Johnstone but work to be done on passing, movement and shooting meant that a series of early chances were missed.  Greg Steven hit the post and Daniel Smith put  a shot narrowly past, but both boys will feel that they should have scored.

However, a goal duly arrived and there was a bit of fortune in it, with the ball more or less bouncing off Steven Buchanan into the net.

A somewhat lucky goal but richly deserved on the balance of play.

Shortly afterwards Irwin Gray had  his first touch of the ball to take a bye kick.  His next touch was to lift the ball from the back of the net as St Benedict’s scored with their first direct shot at goal.

1-1 at half time didn’t tell the full story of what was a generally dominant performance from Johnstone.

Unfortunately, by this stage Steven Buchanan had been taken off and gone to hospital with a broken shoulder bone.  As ever, Steven made no great fuss of this bad injury and hopefully he’ll be fully recovered as soon as possible.

Into the 2nd half and Lewis Banaghan soon made it 2-1.

A better performance from St Benedicts this half and they managed to equalise again for 2-2.

However, the Johnstone boys kept battling and substitute Finlay Ross made it 3-2, with a swift follow up from Daniel Smith meaning the final score was 4 -2 in favour of Johnstone High.

A broken collar bone and a sprained ankle for Greg Steven in a game that was played in a very fair spirit provided the down side to a good opening to the season.

Next up is Glennifer away on Tuesday 29th.

See the league table here.