Day 2
Saturday 17th June 2004 - Dazza decided to go ensuring everyone was up for 7:30 (Ed: 6:40 in my case!) to get some breakfast inside of them. Steve's response to his early morning call was "f**k off dazza" while the Elliot's gave out a few grunts. However, most people managed to arise from their slumber to get some food inside of them as we got ready to tackle our group stages. A bit of nervous energy was about but we were all ready to go and do what we had come here to do, win football matches and score lots of goals.
En Route to the pitch - And so we ventured out of our cars and took the parts for "Camp Internet Millers" up to the pitch area. The men of Rotherham walking into battle, raring to go!
DoubleGazebo - It wasn't long till General Dazza,Angela, Kim and DGH had erect our base where we had final preparations for the Everton game.
Team vs Everton - Jebu named the starting lineup for the Everton match and the players got together to move out to warm up. The Internet Millers would start with a 3-5-2 formation, with Denti, Duds and Paul El in the backline, Dan playing the anchor role in midfield with Andy supporting, giving Jammer a free role in behind the front two of Steve and Jebu. Out wide we had young Mike and the powerful Gaz Elliot. Steve R failed to turn up so a last minute change had to be made but young Mike proved his skill as a footballer as the tournament went on.
EVERTON MATCH REVIEW
The Internet Millers crowded the centre circle and gave out their battle cry of "ATTACK, ATTACK.... ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK" while exchanging some banter with Everton captain Ste who Jebu and Denti have played with before (not TGR style but in football). The match kicked off and it was clear Everton were no mugs but they did appear to have stinking hangovers from the night before.
The millers played some awesome football in the first half and had wave after wave of attack. It wasn't long until it was 1-0 after a ball over the top sent steve through who mistimed his lob, Jebu lurked in the box and pounced as the keeper flapped, tapping in from close range to put the Internet Millers 1:0 up inside a couple of minutes.
This settled the Internet Millers further and we went close on a number of another occasions with some crisp passing, strong tackling and solid defending being shown. Young Mike was showing his quality with some cracking runs, Dan was providing an invisible wall between himself and the back 4 while Andy's passing in the middle of the park ensured we never hit long hopeful balls.
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It was soon 2-0 with a goal that was as easy as it looked. The ball was cleared form defence and Jebu dropped deep to collect in his own half, a quick turn, one look and then a threaded ball past the two centre backs for Steve Burns to run onto. He calmly fired past the outcoming keeper and the Millers were off to a flyer.
All was going perfect at half time. However, the Everton side were no mugs and the second half their hangovers subsided and some slack defending early in the second half allowed them to sneak in to make it 2-1 with a nice finish from a very long ball. The Internet Millers, knowing how important a win in this game was, started to look a little edgy. On the break we still looked like scoring plenty of goals but at 2-1 with 5 minutes to go we sat back and tried to play out the 2-1. a 25 yard screamer by Everton whistled over the top with seconds remaining as hearts were in our mouths! But it ended 2-1 in a definite game of two halves. One where we were simply awesome and another where we panicked.
Final Score: Internet Millers 2:1 Everton
Warm down - General Dazza ensured no one was going to stiffen up so he led a warm down session after the game that ended in a number of stretches. It was important that if we were to do well in the group we didn't stiffen up too much throughout the day and remained loose.
Click here for part 4