Surrey County Cup
We pitched up at Whyteleafe FC a little apprehensive, to find that we were playing on the main clubs pitch, a terraced 4G pitch which was a little intimidating for the lads to say the least. We had the bare eleven, against a strong Whyteleafe side who had the luxury of 4 subs.
The game swiftly settled into a pattern of Cranleigh defending their penalty box, and restricting Whyteleafe to few scoring opportunities. Cranleigh with their three front line players using their pace on the break. With about 5 minutes to half time, Whyteleafe managed to get a shot away sliding in the bottom corner to give them a 1 – 0 lead at half time.
The second half panned out in similar vein, but Cranleigh continued to battle hard and broke down Whyteleafes attacks time after time. Maxim our lone striker carrying an injury was struggling but with no subs stayed on to help the cause. With 3 minutes to go the ball was cleared out to Marcel, who managed to beat his marker and strike a wonderful shoot that looked in all the way, but hit the underside of the bar and bounced agonisingly close to the line….thankfully Maxim found some energy from somewhere and had followed the shot in and slotted it home to level the scores at 1-1.
At the final whistle Cranleigh boys were almost dead on their feet, but had a penalty shoot out to compete in. It was an incredible set of penalties with the scores level at 4 – 4 after the standard 5 penalties each. It then went to sudden death and incredibly the penalties went to the 10th player from each side before Cranleigh finally succumbed to the pressure and Whyteleafe went through 8 – 9 on penalties.
We would like to thank the lads for their incredible spirit, desire and work rate that the lads gave and they should be incredibly proud of their efforts. Thank you also to Chris for running the line, and our parents for supporting the lads as loudly as possible encouraging them every step of the way.
Although our Surrey County cup was a short journey, its one that will be remembered for some time!!
Man of the Match – Everyone!
