Stop Out
1 Western Suburbs 3
Central
League
Hutt
Park
Saturday
23rd July 2016
Attendance
about 50
I've
been pretty lucky this season, with the exception of the Tawa v Wairarapa United Chatham Cup game which had some hail and a
couple of games at Wakefield Park which have been very cold (although
when is it never cold there!) most of the games I've seen have been
in reasonably pleasant weather. Surprising, especially for a Wellington winter.
That was
until Saturday, the day started out OK, but by 9am the dark clouds
had settled in like an Italian team defending a 1-0 lead and
wasn't going anywhere else. And to make it more fun the wind turned
up to play as well. Now Wellington is known for it's wind, when I
grew up one of the best radio stations around was called Radio Windy (there weren't many). I've been places where people have commented
on how windy it is and thought it was only a breeze, because by
Wellington standards it was! Saturday's wind was getting up there, it
was the sort of wind that at times you had to lean into otherwise it
could easily have blown you over – so a strong wind even by
Wellington standards.
My
original intention had been to go and see a Capital Premier
relegation battle between BNU & University at Wakefield Park, but
as this didn't kick off until 3:30 I decided to take in the 1st
half of the Central league clash between Stop Out & Western
Suburbs.
I
arrived at a windswept Hutt Park and quickly realised that it was to
wet and dark to even bother trying to take any photos with my camera.
So I headed over to the club rooms to pick up a program and was
pleased to see 2 off my photo's in it. It was only a bit later that I
twigged why the cover looked familiar – it was another of my
photos! (they had cropped the original, so that's my excuse for not noticing it strait off)
 |
| The match program - with my photo on the cover |
Given
the conditions there was a surprisingly hardy crowd of around 50 that
were watching the game (while it was wet and windy,
it wasn't that cold which probably helped). The 1st half
wasn't a fantastic watch as both teams battled with the conditions,
Western Suburbs did their usual of retaining the majority of possession but not actually doing anything with it.
It was Stop Out,
playing with the wind that opened the scoring when Andrew Abba fired
in a shot from about 25 meters out. It was the sort of shot Stop Out
should have been trying a lot more of especially with the wind behind
them but it was only one of a couple and the score at half time was
1-0 to Stop Out.
 |
| The view of the game - Photo Mike Barton |
By this
stage I was pretty wet, had dug a couple of good footholds in the
ground to stop being blown over, was enjoying some good banter on the
sideline with fans Mike & Mike (not necessarily all about
football) and figuring the conditions at Wakefield would be much the
same I opted to stay for the second half. - So, sorry BNU, I will try and get there this season.
The 2nd half
was much the same but Western Suburbs had 3 shots on goal (one of
them was a penalty) and got 3 goals the best being a free kick from
about 30 or so meters out which took a deflection of a Stop Out
player and this gave them a 3-1 win.
The
result brings Western Suburbs back into contention, when they seemed
to be drifting away. They are now in 5th place but only 3
points of 2nd place. Wellington Olympic have opened up a 5
point gap after a 7-2 thrashing of Palmerston North Marist and Napier
went down 2-1 at home to Miramar. So there are now 8 points separating the top 5 and 3 of those teams (Napier, Western Suburbs &
Miramar having games in hand it still could go anyway.
At the
other end of the table Petone who sacked coach Graham Little during
the week managed their 1st win of the season beating
Wairarapa United 3-1 and brings them within 3 points of Palmerston
North Marist and those 2 teams still have to play each other twice
The
Central League seems like the league to watch this season –
whatever the weather is like!
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