Plymouth Plundered
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime” Babe Ruth
The general feeling from the week before was that despite a solid victory the performance was not what has come to be expected from Taunton CS this season. Buoyed by the return of skipper Ali Johnston and Coach Simon Jones the game plan was clearly set out before the game with focus on utilising the width of the pitch and the passing game.
Within the first few minutes of the game Taunton got the scoreboard moving and the goals followed thick and fast. If the team had been accused in past weeks of taking their foot of the gas then this was not the case here. A fast paced tempo was maintained for the whole 70 minutes of the game and Taunton were able to exert their dominance against what was clearly a weaker side.
Goals were aplenty from short corners with Plymouth being unable to deal with Simon Jones’ drag flicks meaning Simon finished with 4 goals to his name. Upfront Andy Carter had the team worried for a moment that he would not find the goal after seeing some attempts on goals go wide however he was able to hit his stride and also finished the game with 4 goals to his name. Mark Sawyer continued to unsure his name was again included on the score sheet with 2 well taken goals. Last week’s hatrick hero Ben Witt turned provider this week with 3 assists however did score towards the end of the game by dribbling round half of a tired Plymouth team. Further goals were scored by Jim Smith, Josh Stevenson, Torron Everett and finally man of the match James Coles.
The returning Joe Haynes ably stepped in between the post for Mike Whitman who was on girlfriend duty. Although it was largely a quiet afternoon for him, Joe pulled off a couple of smart saves restricting the visitors to one opportunistic consolation goal.
The team can be extremely pleased with the final score line of 15-1 which saw Taunton keep up the level of intensity for the full 70 minutes. However the hard work is just about to start as the next two weeks see Taunton take on Bridgwater and North Devon who are respectively, only four and three points adrift of table topping Taunton!