Jersey U18s 6
O’Toole 3 (1 pen), Baines 2, Dunne
Guernsey U18s 2
Patterson (pen), Graham
The Guernsey under-18s rewrote one of football’s oldest cliches on Sunday according to their coach.
‘It was a game of the same half twice,’ said Leon Meakin after his side suffered a 6-2 defeat at the hands of their Jersey counterparts as the hosts retained the Junior Muratti honours at Springfield.
‘Jersey were deserved winners over the 90 minutes – couldn’t argue with the result of Jersey winning.
‘However, I think at times we’re our own worst enemy today, gave away a few soft goals in periods of the game where we could have probably managed the game a little bit better.
‘So in the first three minutes of the first half we conceded, first three minutes of the second half we’ve conceded and then we’ve conceded two goals in both halves within a minute or two of each other.
'So frustrating with that element of the game.’
The Sarnians went into the contest as underdogs and their challenge increased when they conceded that early goal to Joey O’Toole.
However, the response was a positive one as they soon got a foothold in the game and created a few opportunities of their own.
They were not able to capitalise on those, though, and soon they suffered another setback as they lost Emerson Nobes to injury on the half-hour.
Then came the double whammy of conceding twice in barely more than a minute.
Firstly impressive Jersey winger Rory Baines showed his electric pace to latch onto a ball down the right, sprint away from the defence and slot home.
Just moments after the restart, Gil Hunter lost the ball under pressure from O’Toole, Baines took possession and headed directly for goal where he beat Regan Penney once more in a one-on-one.
Guernsey tried to regroup at the interval, but within the first couple of minutes of the second half Jersey were awarded a soft penalty for a challenge on captain Will Yates and O’Toole made no mistake from the spot to put his side four ahead.
The Greens desperately needed a glimmer of hope and Dylan Graham provided it on the hour mark.
Having come on at half-time, he earned his side a penalty when he was tripped at the end of a positive run and Fin Patterson converted.
Four minutes later, Graham intercepted a poor pass out of the Jersey defence and fired home a sweetly-struck shot off the inside of the far post to make it 4-2.
He also had an opportunity to reduce the deficit to just one, but his effort was clawed away by the home goalkeeper.
Jersey withstood a bit more pressure before making the game safe with two goals in quick succession in identical minutes to the first half.
Stan Dunne slid in the fifth from Yates’ low cross from the right and moments later O’Toole completed his hat-trick having been teed up by player-of-the-match Baines.
‘We had our best periods of the game at 1-0 down – we were on top, we had some good chances, lots of set pieces – and same at 4-0 down – we scored two quick goals, we could have had a third when Dylan went through and the keeper made a good save. It would have made it 4-3 and that's obviously a different game,’ Meakin said.
‘But a frustrating afternoon clearly – we’ve lost and we’ve lost heavily.
‘We made poor decisions at times in those key areas of the game.’
With many of Guernsey’s squad members still having another year, at least, in the age group, Meakin is keen for them to learn from this experience and believes there is potential for them to turn the tables next year if they do so.
‘We’ve got a good group coming forward, but we can’t be complacent about that,’ said the coach.
‘I thought the way Jersey managed the game at times and managed the referee at times was very intelligent and very mature, and we need to find that in our game.
'We need to know how to manage the game in periods when we are struggling. So we’ve got to take lessons from this, absolutely.
‘Those younger players who will play again next year, they’ve got to learn from this and realise that there are key points in the game where we might just need to slow the game down, or we might just have to go long, or we might just have to do things a little bit differently and not shoot ourselves in the foot, because I felt we did that a couple of times.’
TEAMS
Jersey squad: Baines, Brennan, Burton, Cassidy, Drummond, Dunne, Fraser, Freitas, Goncalves, Harben, Henderson, Medeiros, O’Toole, Queree, Yates, Young.
Guernsey: Penney, Nobes, Marsh, Hunter, Mourant, Tyrrell, Cleal, Young, Patterson, Kelly, Torode. Subs (rolling): Graham, Jackson, Mahy, Montgomery, Robilliard.
