Tremayne-dous! (Ouch)

For the record, Tremayne-dous was Miami's suggestion, narrowly beating 'Tremayne Man' as tonight's headline. The other headline candidate was 'Billy Do Be A Hero Again'. Ahem.

Anyway, both our ex-coach's blog below and our current coach's pre-match team talk called for a reaction to last week's abject failure and tonight's 1-0 win over old foes 1860 Lambeth delivered that reaction, by and large. Perhaps it's just as well that the margin of victory was so narrow - no one came away feeling like we're world beaters, which, for anyone with a memory of more than a few hours, we aren't, just yet.

But we are 1860 Lambeth beaters, thanks to some really good performances through the squad, with Munky's Man Of The Match star turn at centre back top of the list. My remark a couple of weeks ago (see further down the blog) that Billy is a future Accies captain was backed up tonight with our number 12 running the show in defence, really positive in his football and his talking for 90 minutes. Credit to Coach09 for putting him there - he'll surely be hard to dislodge from that position, regardless of his Golden Boot goals haul in 2008. One look at our 'goals conceded' tally for 2009 is proof that there was a problem at the back, and the clean sheet was more welcome than ever. I think I can speak for the other defenders tonight when I say that Billy's confidence rubbed off on us and we all did everything we could to emulate his performance.

Further up the pitch, we offered much more in the way of pass and move and attacking fluidity. We still struggled with our first touch at times, but there was so much more effort and application tonight than last week. We didn't have vast amounts of chances, but Shaky put Tremayne clean through with an outstanding pass, and the striker neatly rounded the keeper and slotted home from a narrowing angle. I'll have to check the stats tomorrow, but apparently we always win when Tremayne scores, so maybe his nickname shall be Rushy...

Other highlights included a fine through ball from Tremayne to Bobby, back from France for a fine cameo performance but unable to cap his night with a goal. The only lowlight was Spudgun's penalty miss following a preposterous foul on Miami. Steve would've put us 2-0 up and surely guaranteed a win, but it wasn't to be and the match stayed on a knife edge right to the final whistle. After the game, Luis knocked us all for six when he presented everyone with Peruvian footy shirts, a far-too-generous gift from his recent holiday there. Thanks top man!

A final word: I didn't see anyone getting carried away after the win, and hopefully that's because we all know the real challenge is to carry the decent form into the next game and establish some consistency. Whatever the result against MHP next week, I hope we apply ourselves at least as well, but preferably better, next time out.

Team: Ant, Elbows, Hairy Cornflake, Munky, Marathon Man (sub: Gobby), Miami (sub: Shaky), Joe, Spudgun, Thorny, Mickael (sub: Bobby), Perre (sub: Rushy)
Scorer: Tremayne