Truro friendly

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Kernow Yellow
Grumpy old git
Posts: 3075
Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 5:16 pm

Truro friendly

Post by Kernow Yellow »

Well I'm pleased that Mick Brown showed us the team sheet in the pub before the game, because otherwise I would have struggled to work out who everyone playing last night was. Especially since all the players seemed to be shouting 'Josh' at each other!

In truth I'm not sure I learned much from the performance. Both the wingers (Callum O'Dowda and the triallist Dylan McGlade) looked lively in possession and caught the eye - McGlade had some particularly tricky moves - but both tended to overplay and ran into trouble a few times. Josh Shama was played up front with Ty Marsh, but neither got much joy out of the Truro defence. Shama ran around a lot and was substituted after getting cramp midway through the second half. Our goal was a simple tap-in by O'Dowda after the Truro keeper spilled a Ruffles free-kick.

The two Joshes (Ruffles and Ashby) in the centre of midfield looked ok, but hardly stamped their authority on the game - Truro had more joy in this area I would say.

Crocombe made a great save at 1-1, and he talks A LOT (almost as if you'd think he were shouting support from the stands or dugout), but I can't say I'm sure about him. I know he kept three consecutive clean sheets at the end of last season, but on last night's performance I'd be worried if he were called upon for a long stretch in the first team. But the same could be said for a lot of our 'development squad' in all honesty. I guess the idea is that they'll 'develop' though!

The defence weren't called on to do a lot, but again no-one stood out. Kenzer Lee and Matt Bevans particularly won worryingly few headers at the back, considering that they're not short. Marvin Ekpiteta won more in the air, but then he is very tall, and the headers didn't often go anywhere particularly useful. As a unit they'll be pleased to have kept it fairly solid for 90 minutes after the apparent horror show at CPF, but they didn't offer much resistance for Truro's equaliser - the scorer carried the ball unchallenged to the edge of the area before getting his shot away.

We could and should have scored a couple towards the end, when sub Aidan Hawtin (and one of the CM's I think) missed sitters, but by then Truro had changed almost their entire team, and they more than deserved the draw on the balance of the 90 minutes. They also hit the bar late on.

I know the above seems a bit negative and I don't mean to knock the lads, who were generally accomplished and gave their all, but I would say that the performance went to show that most of them have a bit of a way to go before they're ready for sustained league football.

In case anyone's interested I'd say there were 25-30 yellows fans among the crowd of 382. Womble was notable by his absence! It was a tenner to get in, which is pretty steep for a pre-season friendly against a L2 youth team I'd say. But then Truro are skint and need all the help they can get - geographical anomalies in the pyramid structure make it nigh on impossible for Cornish teams to progress as far as Truro have, and now their ex-chairman Heaney has left them in the lurch they're going to struggle to be sustainable in a league which requires them to travel to places like Bedford on a regular basis on crowds of a couple of hundred at a ground they don't own.
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