Sunday, 16th December – Game #2 versus Vanuatu
Not to bad a day for our game reasonably warm still at 24 °c just a little gusty, hopefully it wouldn’t affect us too much, but I had faith in our preparations and morale in the camp was extremely high at the moment.
Vanuatu suffered an early setback in the game when their influential striker
Richard Iwai had to come off after [b]John Pareanga[b]’s challenge, it was one of things we had talked about before the game, keeping a close check on him was key to our success, so this would definitely help.
Iwai’s injury didn’t seem to much of a concern for Vanuatu when
Massing scored their first goal with 11 down,
Tete made a good interception from
McDonalds pass and his through ball found Massing who had no trouble converting.
Kairau made a couple nice saves but he could nothing about
Morrison’s goal to give them a 2-0 lead.
Mermer’s corner found Morrison on the near post after he slipped his marker and his glancing header was too slick for Kairau to stop.
The chances kept coming for Vanuatu but our defending was better and we managed to keep them out, our first decent chance came just after half hour of play when
Mike Lewis’s hurried clearance found
van Eijk who was replacing the injured Tisam, he ran with the ball up the left and then cut back inside beating 2, his shot was close just skimming the top of the crossbar.
Kairau had to make another good save just before the break and I was relieved to get in only 2 down, the message was we needed to lift, just a bit from everyone, be more precise, keep plugging away and let’s see what happens.
The second half seen Vanuatu go 3 ahead on their first venture forward, an indirect free kick was awarded when
Piri obstructed
Massing, Mermer floated the ball in and it was
Demas who got his head to it.
I'm glad to see we didn’t drop our heads and we went on to dominate the next 20 odd minutes, a lot of that was because Vanuatu went defensive but I'm sure if we had of tried to minimise our losses we could of steam trained,
Taku Samuel and
McDonald both had good chances to claw one back but some good keeping prevented that.
Taku was getting I bit frustrated and ended up receiving a yellow and then warned a little later on, so we brought him off for
Teiva and van Eijk was also brought off for
Kare.
Teiva scored a consolation goal for us in injury time when
MacKenzie played a nice ball through the middle for him, it was just reward for the last 30 minutes we had played, but full credit must go to Vanuatu, who simply outplayed us early.
Vanuatu 3 – 1 Cook Islands Match Stats
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">VanuatuStatsCook Islands7Shots on target349Poss %511Corners 18Fouls170Yellow Cards0</pre>
Goals:
Van: J C Massing (11) S Morrison (17) G Demas (49)
CI: C Teiva (90)
Man of the Match: S Morrison (Van, rm) 5/9 Pass, 5 int, 1 goal.
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">Player Ratings:#PlayerRat1.Kairua72.Samania 63.Lewis75.Pareanga715.MacKenzie7assist7.M Samuel711.McDonald6Yellow18. T Samuel7Yellow, sub 778.Maaka6sub 4510.Puroku620.van Eijk6sub 77-------------------------------21Kare7on 77 van Eijk4.Teiva7Goal, on 77 T Samuel22Piri6on 45 Maaka</pre>
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