Under 17s Lose To Paola Hibs

by Jonathan Spiteri - 26th February 2013

Paola Hibs did the double on Birkirkara when the latter got beaten by a 6-1 scoreline last Saturday at the Victor Tedesco Stadium. This means that Paola Hibs remain top of the table, ahead of nearest rivals Valletta, while Birkirkara now lie in sixth place, with the first three positions now practically out of reach.

The Stripes did not start the game that bad as they held the initiative in the early stages of the game and tried to create something in attack, but as soon as Hibs were given the first opportunity, they duly punished. A through ball split the Birkirkara defence wide open and the Southeners opened the score. Birkirkara tried to find a way back into the game as their opponents seemed happy to pounce on any mistake, and in fact that is what led to the second goal. This effected the team's morale of course, but they refused to fall into defensive mode. Still, even though managing some good passages of play, they did not carve out anything from the opposing defence. Ironically it was Hibs who scored again through another counter attack as half time was approaching, thus ending the first half 3 goals in their favour.

During half time coach Marko Glumac encourage his lads to go out in search of a goal that would unsettle a bit their opponents. Once again though, the Black & Whites proved themselves to be a hard nut to crack and were deadly on the counter attack. At 4-0 everyone would have thrown the towel, but the YellowReds kept on playing and finally got a well deserved goal through Leon Zammit. This was followed by a string of other good goalscoring opportunities which both the goalscorer and Kurt Zammit did not capitalise. Hibs re-composed themselves and managed to add to more goals to seal the victory with a 6-1 scoreline.

Mr Glumac was really sorry with the final outcome of the match, but still acknowledged the boys' efforts: “There is no doubt that Paola Hibs deserved to win this match as they were tactically organised and were deadly when they counter attacked, profiting from our own mistakes. On the other hand though I would still like to say that I am satisfied with my players' attitude since, although the scoreline was against us, we still tried hard to get a goal or maybe more. Let us now focus on our next match'”...and that will be against arch rivals Valletta on Saturday 2nd March at the Rabat Ajax Ground in Mtarfa, kick off at 16:45.

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