KIWIS snagged a late equaliser to deny Tudor West its first win of the Tamworth first grade men’s season on Saturday.
Tudors looked a good chance of picking up the points, leading 3-2 with around five minutes remaining, but the weight of pressure eventually told, with Josh Worpel drag-flicking a penalty corner for Kiwis to sneak away with a 3-all draw.
“We’d had a lot of short corners against us towards the end of the second half,” Tudors coach Brad Hall said.
“We were under the pump.”
Hall said it was a bit of a scrappy effort from them but they fought well.
“We were a little bit on the backfoot for most of the match,” he said.
“Kiwis played with a bit more intensity and were very focused.
“They were a bit sharper on the ball and we were under pressure for long periods of time.
“But we managed to score a couple of good breakaway goals.”
He said defensively they played pretty well most of the match.
“Our first two goals came from some good defence, good outletting and good finishing,” Hall said.
Matt Newell, Sam Lobsey and Lachlan Skinner scored their three goals.
“It wasn’t a bad result. We’re getting a lot closer to where we need to be,” Hall said.
Particularly in the second half.
“The second half we had a bit more purpose in what we were doing,” he said.
“We had a lot more intensity and the 50-50 balls, we started to win those.”
He said Jake Sheppeard and Andrew Finch were good at the back while Sam Holt had a good game filling in in goals.
Kiwis were relieved to get the draw, especially after the amount of chances they had.
“We had 80 per cent of the possession but we couldn’t score goals,” Kiwis’ Tim Hardy said.
They had shots just missing the outside post by a couple of centimetres and were guilty of “going straight for goal”.
“We were going way too direct instead of being patient and working the ball around,” he said.
He said they had to be smarter in what they did when they got their opportunities, of which they created a lot.
“We created a lot of turnovers,” Hardy said.
“Our press worked really hard up front and in the second half we capitalised on it.”
Worpel and Antony Doolan both really stood up, he said, while Matt Johnston and Matt Stamrinovich also played well.
Mitch Burrows scored the two goals preceding Worpel’s.
Services Workies then beat South United 2-nil, with Isaac Farmilo and Chris White
scoring.
South coach Chris Massey said they played “well in patches and bad in patches”.
Their biggest problem though was finishing.
“We couldn’t finish. That last touch didn’t go in,” Massey said.
“We got into the circle quite a lot but couldn’t finish, which was disappointing.”
He said defensively they were pretty sound and thought Luke Ayres at the back was one of their best.
Jarrod McCluand was also good in the midfield and worked hard all game.
