Our Trip to Cardinia

We ventured down to Cardinia on Saturday May 28 to play Pakenham. Every game is going to be difficult from here on out as teams get injuries, suspensions, but start to get match fit and hardy. Pakenham was no different. They too are a new club who have entered the fray to get out of division 5. If you look at their record for win/loss it seemed that they should be an easy victory. But a closer look shows you that they had never been beaten by much and that they were very close in games.
They were a very tough outfit who had a very strong defensive unit led by great keeping and some experienced players.
The game started swiftly as Chelsea passed the ball well and attacked time and time again, only to be repelled by the Pakenham defense. We had loads of opportunities in the first 20 minutes and they hardly troubled our defenders as our midfield really held well. McCarthy, Tucci, and Dale controlled the middle and repeatedly gave the ball out to Connor Lewis and Tom Flavelle who really had strong first halves. We pressured and pressured but could not get through that last line of defense. Seb and Lachy were trying ery hard and making many runs, and Adam Alford was performing well in our 9. Adam K, Lucas and James were pretty much untroubled for the first 20 minutes.
We were really playing well and had Pakenham scrambling. Eventually there was some super play from Lachy and Adam Alford who combined brilliantly for a great goal. It was excellent and clever play. Not too long later a through ball was played past Adam and he cleverly chipped the keeper to give us a 2-0 lead.
At that point we looked as if we would over run the opposition, but then they earned a throw in and threw the ball long to where they tried to skip the header further on. We misread the ball and failed to clear properly and a Pakenham player simply put the ball past James and they had hope and belief. From this point on it became a real arm wrestle.
Both teams had chances, even though Chelsea had the far better chances  but at the half we went in with a 2-1 lead.
We had to do better with our possession in the transition from middle third to final third. But we could not change too much as we were outplaying them and had at least 70% possession.
The second half saw a multitude of chances and possession rates about the same as the first half. We had great opportunities to extend the lead and missed quite a few 1 V 1 with the keeper as well as sometimes getting in our own teams way. We failed three times to pass the ball across the keeper to an open player and we just could not score. Our defense was getting tired but folks like McCarthy and Tucci were holding well and Tom Flavelle was having his best game for the season. In the end we earned the three points but once again or problem was finishing teams off and letting them have opportunities to score against us!
Best players Michael McCarthy, Tom Flavelle, Michael Tucci, Seb Gueho, Goals Adam Alford 2.