St Pauli (Hamburg) visit Malahide

Malahide selection 4 St Pauli 4

The seventh team of Hamburg soccer club FC St. Pauli 1910 visited Malahide United and played a Malahide select team. A ground with a seaview is something one cannot often enjoy while playing in the St. Pauli Siebte Herren. Hamburgs inner city grounds are usually a roughturf covered with ashes or rubble, and next to them there usually is a fair amount of high rise buildings. To play at the beautiful allweather ground of Malahide and to challange a team from Ireland for the first time ever filled the hearts of the St. Pauli-Players with anticipation and excitement.

Pauli coach Lars Spader decided tactic-wise on no experiments. knowing,that Malahide's all star team probably would have the better performers in any one on one situation, strategic discipline was supposed to be the key to success. The defensive outline well proven in Paulis league games (two defensive central midfield players and the others free to attack Malahide) was to be combined with rapid counter attacks.

The game began turbulently, especially for the St. Paulis defence who were surprised by the speed at which the ball was passed between the Malahide players, allowing them to swarm all over St Pauli . More than once Malahide were able to outrun Paulis defence but found keeper Buschmann well prepared to match their shots. Especially Malahides Kevin Craven and Bobby Browne who saw plenty of the ball at this stage. It took twenty minutes for St. Pauli to settle into the game. While the first shots on goal were quite harmless the first header after a corner from the right brought a little danger in the Malahide penalty box.

All the while, Malahide continued to play the ball wide with crosses raining into the st pauls box, however, more than once were no attackers there to meet the cross To be fair, the st pauli defencewas happier to deal with this threat than have to deal with Malahide playing one two at the edge ofthe box or players running at pace at the defence. When Malahide decided to go straight for goalwith three or four short passes in midfield, it was common to see a Malahide player dribbling at high speed while being followed by an eager, but often helpless pack of three or four Pauli players.

Malahide finally breached the St Pauli defence when a low drive from Bobby Browne on the right wasfinished from close range by Con McMahon. Pauli were shocked, the team behaved like a punch drunkboxer. Weak passes in the midfiled allowed Malahide again and again to gain the ball and to mountfurther attacks. 2,0 followed a little later with Con McMahon once again finding the net., St Pauli werehappy to hear the half time whistle. With ball possession at about 80:20, favouring Malahide, even with a score of 8:0 Pauli could not have complained.

The second half started off better for the Hamburg team: After a corner kicked by Manni Heinzinger from the right Homer-Simpson-Lookalike Buffy pounded in a massive header. Now the game was more open, now Pauli had more confidence that there could be more for them than just a nice seaview.

Malahide seemed to relax a little during this phase. There was however still plenty to do for Pauli-Keeper Buschmann. Especially from Malahides Kevin Craven (the mastermind behind most of the attacks) who still had plenty of beautiful ideas on where to slip the ball to,. Malahides next goal thus came to no-ones surprise, when Callum Riches shot from distance found it's way to the right corner of the goal.

But 3:1 was not end it. Malahide had often outnumbered the Pauli defence in the first half, since a lot of midfielders and even defenders joined the attackers. This did not happen so often in the second half, which is no surprise given that Pauli had a panel of 16 players who could come in and go out to catch a breath while Malahide had the bare 11. This became obvious in the last half hour when the Malahide central defenders Gareth Logan and Gary O Toole were finding it more difficult to pick out their passes.

Paulis midfielders were able to close some holes, and Raimund, Lars and Fred (and as a sub: Knut) indefense were able to get a little more hold of their attackers than in the first half. Slowly Pauli was able to gain control of the match, at least for about five or six minutes. Hannes used the occasion and headedin another goal after an assist from Andre. The equalizier a little later probably will be remembered a long time by Malahides central defender Gareth Logan , who spoilt an up till then flawless and brilliant game by losing the ball as the last man the ball to DJ M=FCller. After DJ had been outdribbled for about 56 times during this match, he snatched this one ball from Gareth.s feet, ran towards the goal and swept the ball in beautifully.

Malahide reacted swiftly and pressed on again. Once more, chaos reigned in the Paulis penalty box, balls were zooming in and out, some were cleared by the defence, other missed by the attackers, and several more shots and headers missed the goal by inches or found their way into Buschmanns hands. With only about five minutes to go 3:3 seemed to be it. But still there was more: Chris grabbed the ball in the middle of the ground and sprinted for goal. Approaching the goal from the right hand side, he finished the run beautifully to put pauli ahead 3-4 Malahide then pressed for an injury time equaliser with hardly anybody remained in their half.

The equalizer finally came when Derek Stanley kicked high into the blue sky in the Pauli penalty box only for it to fall down sharply right behind the Pauli gloalie. It was more than well deserved. Shortly after the goal, referee Lars Spader blew the final whistle.

Malahide; Graham Greene, Derek Stanley, Gareth Logan, Gary O Toole, Rory Gallagher Kevin Craven, Bobby Browne, Paul Murray, Ian Casey, Callum Riches Con McMahon

St Pauli Fred Roelfing , Hannes Hohnhorst, Andreas Buschmann , Rainer Klute , Knut Kallsen , Raimund Veith , Janos Gyurkovics, Frank Mertens , Frank "Buffy" Hoop , Lars Reppesgaard , Andree Steffens , Mannii Heinzinger ,
Christian Baars, Nikolai Vokuhl Adt Matze Doebele, Markus "DJ" Mueller, Peter Anders .
Coach: Lars Spader