Report posted by Kidare Saint on the IS message board
What a strange game. It's not often we play for a nil-nil draw and end up on the wrong end of a five-goal game. It's also not often (in fact I'd probably say it was the first time I'd ever seen it) that we play a 4-5-0-0-1 formation in the Gaelic football style (i.e. 4 full-backs, 5 half-backs, 0 midfielders, 0 half-forwards, 1 full-forward)! Ger McCarthy looked a lonely soul up front.
The principal tactic for the game was to slow things down although we took it to the extreme with Seamus Kelly getting booked for timewasting midway through the first half. The temperature in Rijeka yesterday reached 35 degrees centigrade and it hadn't cooled down much by 6:30pm so the tactic made sense from that point of view. The problem was that the wingers appeared to be under instructions to stay back with the result that Ger Mc had to try to win the ball in the middle of the field and create something from there. That tactic backfired in the final minutes.
In the first half we absorbed a huge amount of pressure from Rijeka although Seamus Kelly only had a couple of saves to make. Just as it looked like we were going to reach half-time on level terms we won a corner which Rusty deftly floated in on to the head of Ozo for a major shock lead. In spite of 5 minutes injury time being added we held on to the lead until half time.
Dazed and confused, the travelling supporters didn't know what to make of it all. Surely this was a dream and the horrible nightmare of Zimbru would come back to haunt us? Much of the talk at half time centered around a possible change in tactics, a "kick 'em while they're down" ploy perhaps. However, normal service resumed as soon as the second half commenced.
For seven more minutes we dealt with everything Rijeka could throw at us until the inevitable goal came. After that they regained their confidence and their 3,000 supporters regained their voice and they continued to press forward.
So it was no surprise that our second goal came from a long ball that was badly controlled by the defender outside his box. Ger Mc was in the right place at the right time and in spite of running himself into the ground for the previous 78 minutes he managed to pull the ball away, run in to face the keeper in a one-on-one and place the ball in the bottom corner of the net. Hysteria among the visiting fans again and we were seriously worried that we'd all had our drinks spiked with halucinogenic drugs. Surely we couldn't get our first away win in European football?
And so the self-destruct button was pressed. The pressure was piled on straight from the tip off by the home team and when the referee signaled 5 minutes of injury time again to the fourth official, we knew we could be in trouble. Right enough with one minute of normal time left they grabbed their equaliser, and in the second minute of injury time struck for the winner. We were back down to earth with a bang, probably one of the many firecrackers the home fans had.
So did the tactics work? Well we managed two away goals but we still have to win the home leg so the jury is out. The fact that we managed two goals maybe suggests that we could have won easily if we'd been a bit more adventurous but who knows. The last thing we wanted was a repeat of Moldova and that it certainly wasn't. So yes, we can certainly beat Rijeka in the home leg, we don't need to be in fear of them.
Just a footnote about the Rijeka club. They organised some of their fans to come and meet us for a couple of drinks on Thursday night, organised a free bus to collect us and bring us to the match, gave us free tickets into the match and gave us free beer after the match while we waited 45 minutes to be let out of the ground by the police who seemed to be worried that there may be some trouble - apparently there had been at some of their matches last season. If only we got treatment on every away trip!
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