With the match being a friendly, a couple of Shambles more senior players stood aside to let the team blood a couple of new players, Nic and Joe. As far as friendlies go though, this was a cracker and it was clear early on that both sets of players were taking the game very seriously.

The match started with the Shambles slightly  on the back foot, with their opponents, Gialloneri, having the best of the opening period, the Shambles defence and keeper coped admirably for the most part, but were finally undone by a great bit of individual skill by one of the opponents forwards. This breach seamed to spur on the Shambles to improve and they started to put some attacking moves of their own together One such move brought about an equalizer mid way through the first half, scored by the Shambles top marksman so far this season, Dave, making his tally 5 goals in 4 games. This time it was Gialloneri turn to be galvanised by the goal against them and it was only a flurry of amazing saves by Shambles keeper James that kept our boys in the match. Eventually though, it was just too much and the opposition scored. However, their lead was short lived, with super stand in Nic taking full advantage of some confusion in the opponent’s ranks to score a scorcher from the half way line straight from kickoff. The halftime whistle went shortly after with the teams level at 2-2.

The second half started in a similar way to the first, Gialloneri having most of the ball, but this time they couldn’t use it to there advantage, with James again making some terrific saves to keep the opponents at bay. Slowly though the Shambles started to come back into it, with new boy Joe getting into the game and imposing himself on the left wing, holding the ball up and tracking back to defend when called on. It was Joe’s presence that helped create the third Shambles goal, which was scored through Chris. The defender burst forward, reading a pass which left him with only a player and the keeper to beat, the intended sidestep may not have come off as planned, but the finish certainly did, Chris nutmeged the defender with a low shot that went on to beat an unsighted keeper. Spurred on by a goal of their own this time, the Shambles made it 4-2 through another great goal by Nic, beating his man, he blasted a shot into the very top corner, giving the keeper no chance.

Some pressure from Gialloneri at the end of the second half led to a goal to bring it back to 4-3, but the opposition never looked like getting an equalizer. The final whistle went and Shambles can be proud of a hard fought victory against a team who are currently joint top of the first division. 

Amazingly , even though this was a friendly game,other results went in The Shambles favour, and we STILL managed to go up a place in the Table from 6th to 5th!!!