CD THADER – 6 NOVELDA CF – 1 (BY STEVE HIBBERD)
Manager Raul Mora elected to make sweeping changes for this 3rd home preferente league game on the trot. The previous weeks hugely disappointing draw with Benidorm, meant that home advantage had once again failed to be capitalised on. Big names were on the bench, whilst newly signed keeper Mirete made a debut for his new club.
Novelda arrived at Moi Gomez stadium having won and lost in their first 2 games, being very much a team in transition, following numerous changes of personnel.
It took only 8 mins for Berni to latch on to Pedro’s exquisite through ball, before slotting the ball under an onrushing keeper. Rafa almost doubled Thader’s lead, but his speculative long-range effort was fractionally too high. Pedro looked to have his legs taken from under him midway through the 1st half, but unfortunately, the ref wasn’t impressed enough to award Thader a penalty.
A linesman’s offside flag, appeared to cut short Novelda’s celebrations on 26 mins, but an eagle-eyed ref spotted that it was a Thader player who last played the ball, which set up Chukwuma for a cracking strike on goal. So, with parity restored, it was the visitors who noticeably upped the ante. Chukwuma again put the ball in the net, except this time the offside flag was not overruled.
Back came Thader, as Berni, Rosquin, then Pedro, all had good efforts on goal thwarted. But, just before half time, another Pedro assist, this time for Quino, saw the human goal machine make light work of notching his first goal of the season on 44 mins.
Both sides started the new half ready for a scrap – literally!! A further 3 bookings were added to the 2 already in the ref’s book, before some sort of order was eventually restored. Berni found space on the left wing on 58 mins, then his inch perfect cross was powerfully headed home by Pedro to make it 3-1.
Less than 3 mins later it was 4-1, this time a Pedro shot was parried into the path of Berni, who made no mistake from close range. One of 5 second half substitutes, Dani Lucas joined the party on 71 mins, when his blockbuster from fully 25 yards almost broke the net to make it 5-1. Another sub made it 6-1 in stoppage time.
Man of the match Pedro, once again turned provider, crossing the ball for Juanlu to score his 2nd goal of the new season.
Next weekend, Thader make the short trip to Murada, who haven’t started the season particularly well. Check CD Thader facebook page for further details.
