Freshmen Lose 7-3 on the Road to Manchester Memorial

 

 

The Hanover Freshmen had their first road game of the season Saturday and lost 7-3 to a talented and aggressive Manchester Memorial side that taught them a number of valuable lessons.  It needs to be said right off the bat that the game was much closer than the score indicates. The score was tied at halftime, and Hanover took a 3-2 lead in the second half.  The Bear Cubs faded in the second half, and will learn a great deal from the entire experience.

 

Perhaps still shaking off the effects of the Saturday morning bus trip, and perhaps still thinking of their 9-0 win Concord, the Bears were ambushed five minutes into the game.  Memorial took a corner kick, Hanover failed to clear effectively, and a Crusader striker jumped onto the loose ball for an easy goal.  Hanover came back in the 11th minute, when Ronan Przydzielski took a corner and Sam Bagatell, doing his best Harry McGuire imitation and threw himself into the mixer.  The ball caromed off his back past the keeper, and the match was tied. 

 

Hanover took the lead in the 16th minute when speedy Casper Besana fed to ball to Ro-Ro for a shot that slid under the goalkeeper and gave the Bears a 2-1 lead.  Memorial tied the game in the 24th minute when Jackson Souther made the save on a Crusader shot, and the home team was first to the ball, slamming it into the vacated goal. Hanover’s high water mark came two minutes after the interval, when the omnipresent Przydzielski dug the ball out the right corner of the penalty area and laid a pass to the top of the box for an onrushing Oliver Benedict, who stroked it into the far corner for a 3-2 lead.

 

From then on it was downhill for Hanover, as the skillful Crusaders took advantage of some mistakes and positional mismatches.  Memorial converted another rebound to tie the score in the 46th minute, and went ahead when one of their strikers was unmarked at the far post on a corner kick, going ahead 4-3 in the 53rd minute.  The wheels started coming off in the final 22 minutes.  A poor goalkeeper clearance gave Memorial an easy goal at the 58-minute mark, and ten minutes later multiple defensive breakdowns and a far post finish made it 6-3.  Memorial’s final goal came with five minutes to play:  a bad clear, bad marking, and overcommitment by a defender gave a Crusader striker the chance to bury a high, hard shot far post.

 

This is not a bad time of year for a hard loss.  The team has two days to train before hosting Londonderry on Thursday and then heading out on the road next Saturday for a trip to the Seacoast and a match at Portsmouth. 

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