Defensive lapse leads to YoungHeart defeat

SAM BAKER/Manawatu Standard

ON THE RUN: YoungHeart Manawatu striker Seule Soromon, left, has the ball at his feet under some attention from Waikato's Richard Beard during their match at Memorial Park yesterday.

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YoungHeart Manawatu will need to stop leaking goals if they want to make the New Zealand Football Championship playoffs.

In a 10-minute spell early in the second half at Memorial Park yesterday, YoungHeart caved in defensively, conceding three goals to lose 3-2.

The home loss, after they were comfortably 2-0 up at halftime, has left YoungHeart near the foot of the table, six points behind third-placed Otago, who beat Wellington 3-1 in Dunedin.

YoungHeart coach Bob Sova said the equation to make the playoffs was simple. "We've got five games left and we need to take each one as though it was a cup final and not look ahead to the next one," Sova said. "We can still do it, but we need to defend a lot better.

"It's the same old story in football when it's not going your way, the rub of the green goes against you.

"Campbell [Banks] got two great shots off that could have made it 3-all but one hit the defender and the other the crossbar."

YoungHeart was without Jimmy Haidakis who has disappeared off the radar in the past week and Raf de Gregorio with food poisoning, said coach Bob Sova.

After a first spell where there was no pressure on the YoungHeart defence, the second spell got off to a shocker when goalkeeper Ross Nicholson saw an innocuous shot from Jeff Campbell slip through his hands.

It got worse, as the YoungHeart midfield and defence made numerous errors and put themselves under pressure with wayward clearances.

"To be honest it wasn't good defending from our midfield to our defence and goalkeeper," Sova said.

"Last week we were 2-1 up with 20 minutes to go and this week it was even better at 2-0. You just can't afford to let those sorts of leads slip."

It looked as though a win was a formality at halftime, 2-0 up and with keeper Nicholson not looking like he was going to have to make a save.

"I told them at halftime it wasn't over but didn't really think they would be able to," Sova explained.

"I don't think they had a strong second half, just for 10 minutes we gave them space and time and they took advantage." Daniel Benson scored a screamer when he met a cross at the back post with a brilliant volley.

Then after 35 minutes a long ball down the middle found Seule Soromon after Banks had let the ball go and the league's golden boot scored his eighth goal of the season.

Waikato player-coach Che Bunce put himself up front and brought on Jason Chewins at the back and the impact was immediate. Chewins made some crunching tackles while Bunce pushed right on the last YoungHeart player, either Adam Cowan or Colin Falvey.

The ability of Bunce to lay the ball off gave Campbell, David Samson and Michael Gwyther all the space they needed to carve up the YoungHeart defence. YoungHeart are fortunate to have only conceded three goals in that 10 minutes with three more going narrowly wide.

- © Fairfax NZ News