Sunnyvale 3 Rovers 1

Sunnyvale defeated Rovers in their first competitive league match in an exciting premiere league contest this Sunday's at Palo Alto's El Camino Park. Brodie and Gibbs passed late fitness tests to join the starting 11, while the back 3 consisted of Jonathan, Matty and Eoin, 2 of which were not in these positions last week. It was not to much of a surprise that Sunnyvale started brightly. The Rovers didn't make one pass of note in the first 10 minutes. Constantly giving the ball away and making hopeful passes to that the Rovers front men of Nigel and Bryce could not get on the end of. Sunnyvale were sitting very deep defensively, keeping bryce's pace in front of them. Byrce did have a good shout for obstruction when he was wrestled to the ground but a call was not given. After 20 minutes Jed came to help cement the back 3. Of course Jed made an immediate impact on the game and started throwing in tackles. Matty whipped in a great free kick to Bryce but his knock down header was cleared. Brodie put in a corner that Gibbsy did well to react to but his header hit the side netting. It was really no surprise that the Rovers conceded first as they were 2nd to every lose ball. Sunnyvale broke down the Rovers left side and the player hit the by line he played in a simple cross for his team mate to tap in.Good goal and deserved. Kc and the back 3 kept the Rovers in the game for the rest of the half.

Brodie moved into the center of the park with Curt and Mark with Joe going outside right. eoin was on the left of the midfield. Making his debut on to the field for the first time was club captain Paulie. Paulie immediately made an impact. He was holding the ball up, playing balls square and into smart areas of the pitch. The Rovers were like a different team in the 2nd half. They were playing much higher up the field and Bryce was becoming more difficult for them to mark. Inside of 55 minutes the Rovers were all square with Brodie on the score sheet after his wind aided corner went into the goal. The dubious goal panel was consulted but came back with the correct decision. At this point their only looked to be one winner but the Rovers were finding it hard to test the keeper. Bryce was played in, after a good move by Lawton and Brodie, but his shot was hit tamely at the keeper. Lawton went on a tremendous run, beating about 5 Sunnyvale players, his shot was blocked but it feel nicely to O'Mahony who shot was going for the top corner but their goalie managed to save. The resulting corner was almost glanced in however Eoin failed to make enough of a connection to change the flight of the ball.

It was backs to the wall stuff for Sunnyvale at this point. Ben was introduced to right midfield and Nigel came in up top, only to limp off moments later with a calf injury. Ben was making some crunching tackles, and one of the worst decisions of the day was when Ben received a yellow card for nothing, he clearly won the ball... The Sunnyvale man did beat Ben and Brodie inside the box only to go down like a big girls blouse under the tackle of Jonathan. Should he kept his feet he would have probably scored he decided to put fate in the hands ofthe ref who didn't want any of it. Sunnyvale, then went ahead against the run of play, but the worry was always that they would score as the Rovers couldn't find that killer ball to give them the lead. They broke the deadlock with a neat move that started on the halfway line and ended up in the back of KC's net after 4 passes. Nothing anyone could do. The third goal was offside but at this point it didn't really look like anyway back for the Rovers as the had only 11 "fit" players left. A good start is turning ugly quick.

MOM: Jonathan Tremendous stuff only gave the ball away once but honorable mention to Curt who worked his arse off and contributed to the attack.

Pitch: Terrible

REF. Let a lot go and we had a strong shot for a pk turned down n both halves.