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Blackpool’s captain Rob Abbott had expected to miss this fixture (and next week’s) due to his wife booking their week-long family holiday with travelling on two separate Saturday’s, much to Rob’s disgust. Thus he’d arranged for the previous captain Dave Morgan to fill in during the interim.
Dave had arranged a full squad, even with changed kit, due to Triton playing in orange, to the infamous Easter green & gold in honour of Aussie-based sponsors Walkabout.
However Rob arrived at the airport early on Saturday morning only to be told that the flight had been delayed for 12 hours. First thought he had “that means I could still play in today’s game”, second thought “how do I persuade the wife”, third thought “sod it, she never asked me whether I was happy to take out 2 Saturday’s in the middle of the season, I’m off”. So several phone calls later, spare kit, stick and size 9 boots were rustled up by the rest of the team, and we all met up in sunny Alsager for a match with two captains.
After an early scare from a Triton attack, Blackpool composed themselves and Dave Morgan fired them into an early lead with a sweet strike. Defender Dec O’Hara was able to push forward and found himself in a position within the D to calmly pass the ball into the net to make it 2-0 after just 10 minutes.
Blackpool then thought it was all too easy, pressing too many players in attack and started to get caught out by counter attacks. Finally Triton were awarded a series of penalty corners and from one of them squeezed a goal by the near post to reduce Blackpool’s lead to one at half-time.
Shortly after the break, Dave Morgan converted from a Blackpool penalty corner to restore the two goal cushion. Again Blackpool continued attacking, eager for further goals but this led to big gaps in midfield and Triton able to counter attack. Eventually they managed to break the Blackpool defence but this just inspired Dave Morgan to a hat-trick and a 4-2 victory.
Both captains happy for the vital away win which gave Blackpool another three point cushion from relegation whilst Triton dropped to last place in the league. One captain happy for his personal hat-trick and the other happy that he hadn’t wasted an afternoon stuck in the departures lounge at Manchester Airport.
The opposition gave the Man of the Match award to David Wright who umpired.
© Peter Latimer 11/2/10