Wednesday, May 16th 1973

Ngaruawahia Draw Soccer with Matamata

A pitch made soft by overnight rain had little effect on play between Matamata and Ngaruawahia United soccer teams on Saturday. Playing at home, Ngaruawahia came out as the definite underdogs having no wins so far this season. Still lacking a number of regular members who were on holiday, Ngaruawahia made the most of those present.

Matamata scored first. A 40-yard drive was let through by keeper Nightingale, who thought that it was wide of the post. Shortly after Matamata scored again when Nightingale was obscured by his own defence and a melee close-in resulted in a netted ball. It was at this stage that Ngaruawahia adopted a stronger defence with Adrian Turner dropping back from the halves into the fullback position, giving his team a more effective four-fullback defence.

Just before the half-time a strong attack was mounted by Matamata up the right wing. Their winger broke into the penalty area but was robbed of the ball by MacDonald who took it partially down the left, centred to Sunnex on the centre-spot who volleyed it on to Neil Gorman on the right wing. His low centering kick found Geoff Young who made no mistake with his first-timer.

The equaliser for Ngaruawahia came when George Sunnex was fouled just outside the penalty area on the right wing. Sandy MacDonald moved up from fullback a drove a hard ball towards the top corner of the goal. The defence went up and a head deflected it into the net for 2-2.

The second half, though scoreless, was most entertaining. Matamata began to argue amongst themselves and lost much of the cohesiveness they had in the first spell. The Ngaruawahia players kept quiet and played football whilst Matamata turned on an extremely verbal game, frequently challenging the referee’s decisions.

Apart from his one blue, Rex Nightingale had a solid game, with newcomer Adrian Turner getting through some valuable defensive work. Garry Barnes had a few bright spots and George Sunnex showed his ball control in tight situations. Steven Mark covered a lot of ground as sweeper and did it effectively.

Ngaruawahia have a bye this Saturday while their 4th Division team has a home game against Fraser-Tech at 2 p.m.