Gungahlin Sound Tornado Warning

The Gungahlin Tornadoes began their McDonalds Kanga Cup campaign in the best possible fashion yesterday, coming from behind to snatch a dramatic 2-1 win over the Umina Strikers in the under-10 boy’s cup competition.

The Tornadoes sealed the win with the last kick of the match when Robert Tchatchenko finished from close range after Umina were unable to clear the ball from their box in the dying stages. It was a heartbreaking result for the Central Coast based Strikers who, despite playing in their first ever match at the Kanga Cup, looked in control for much of the game. Many of the Gungahlin players are playing up an age group in order to compete in this year’s tournament and Coach Chris Timotheou was full of praise for his young side. “The team is mostly eight and nine year olds but we’ve been playing older teams than us in ourpreparation and that’s worked out really well,” Timotheou said. “We had no expectations coming in and we thought we might get smashed to be honest so a win is definitely more than I thought we’d get.” A win looked far from likely for the Tornadoes early in the match as Umina dominated the openinghalf with the impressive Kye Sherrock creating a number of chances. The Strikers proved unable to breach a resilient Gungahlin defence however and the sides went into half time locked at 0-0.

Sherrock continued his good work after the break and he finally found his range five minutes into the second period, blasting home a volley from close range to give Umina the lead. Any thoughts the Strikers may have had of taking the match away from the Tornadoes were quickly quashed however as a brilliantly taken spot kick from Nathan Beil levelled the scores. In a frantic final few minutes both sides had chances to put the match away before Tchatchenko’s scrambled effort on the final whistle gave Gungahlin the win. Umina coach Jackson White said there were plenty of positives for his side to take out of the match regardless of the final result. “I felt we probably dominated most of the game but things like that final [Gungahlin] goal just happen in football,” White said. “This is our first year down here in Canberra and we have a good team so we’re hoping to go well and we still can go well.”

This article is from the Official Match Reports the latest copy of which can be found here: http://www.kangacup.com/category/latest-news/