Raiders continued a great patch of form by taking a point from OS, last years champions. And the champions of the year before that. And the year before that.

Confidence was high after the Saints victory and a full strength squad minus Tarek saw returning superstars Craig ‘tweet that!’ Armitt and Nico ‘the shark’ Greeve relegated to the bench, Angelo preferring to start the same eleven from the previous week.

The first half was fairly even, with both sides creating a couple of opportunities. Raiders scored first, as Laurie found himself in a familiar position, through on goal, and he finished clinically lofting the ball high over the keeper into the top left corner. Raiders then were disappointed to concede as a defensive mix-up saw OS striker able to roll the ball over the line. 1-1. Late in the half Dawson saw his header come back off the crossbar from a corner and Albin nearly completed the follow up.

Second half saw more Raiders chances, and only two that we could count for OS, one of which saw a Fred free kick well tipped over by Angelo. With Andreas, Seb, Paddy and Joey all feeling particularly stingy in defense, there wasn’t much of a sniff for the OS attack. At the other end of the field, Raiders made a number of inroads and most notably Nico who created a couple of fine chances for himself after his familiar jinking and weaving past defenders. The first saw him tripped in the box for what looked like a blatant penalty…with the referee putting his whistle in his mouth and running towards the box, arm outstretched towards the spot…but then decided to change his mind and give nothing. The second, he created space after beating two players and got his shot away, narrowly passing the post.

No doubt, its a good point for Raiders but it certainly wasn’t a scraped point either, the consensus being that we could certainly have come away with the win with a little more luck.

Another great team performance! The league table looks like this of this morning after the weekend results:

Raiders 1 OS 1

NTV 10 Fighting Cocks 2 (Hey!)

Hotshots 3 – 0 Japan

Saints vs Hiep Phu ???

Squad: Angelo, Andreas, Seb, Paddy, Joey, Anthony, Peter, Rasul, Henno, Jon, Sascha, Craig, Laurie, Nico, Toby, Albin, Vu