Written by Peter Garnett
The rotten finish to game one was a bitter pill to swallow, the best we could manage would be to win the second game and force an aggregate draw. Things began well as we broke through on the left flank with Sami Bekir, before he fed Dario Marini who tucked away the finish to lead early on for the second time of the afternoon. This time we held on for longer before conceding but fatally failed to deal with the aerial assault nor cut out the crosses in from either flank and whilst we kept them at bay the pressure told and we were back to drawing level, as Klea Filandras was left with a one-on-one and conceded a penalty. The hosts had a fairly limited style of play but they remained effective enough to see out the half.
The second half continued with little difference, we tried to get the ball down and play but got hustled out of too many challenges, we also struggled to string our passing game together sufficiently well to get good chances and it was with some inevitability that we fell behind again as we were forced off the ball in our own half. Try as we might to get back into the game they always managed to contain us and despite repeated efforts that either broke down through ragged passing or physical pressure from the ever bustling Minchendenians. We did keep pressing though and, following a last minute corner which Charlie Heath took, and scored from as the keeper lost the flight of the ball and could only get a despairing hand to help it into the net. A draw was another disappointing outcome but at least it was a point won and sharing the points more than we got from the first game.