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Misato, Sun 3rd Dec. The Geckoes kicked off their cup campaign with a fine win over Division 2 strugglers Armanis on Sunday afternoon. The game started at a fast pace and the first goal came within 3 minutes as the Geckoes central defender rose like a Salmon to head the ball home from a corner past the stunned keeper and defender on the line. Unfortunately no-one had pointed out to Ian that we were actually kicking the other way - So for the second game in a row, the Geckoes needed to come behind to get the win.
 After struggling to create much at the start of the game, we pushed Masa into the middle and didn't look back. He soon started dominating in midfield and Armanis struggled to cope. He scored his debut goal for the club after 25 minutes with a very well taken goal.
Shortly afterwards Kazu Kikuchi picked the ball up in midfield before dribbling past a few defenders before hitting an absolute belter into the top corner from 15 yards. Half-time 2-1.
During the half time break, it was pointed out by Rob Manger that an early goal would seal the game and that's nearly what we had. Masa went on another one of his runs, beating 4 defenders before pulling the ball back for Rob Manager. Unbelievably (for most of the people watching), the ball hit a bump (honest) and bobbled (badly) in front of Rob and it finished somewhere in the Saitama swamp behind the goal.
Armanis kept pushing forward and were trying to catch the Geckoes out on the break but found themselves 3-1 down with 10 minutes to go after another perfect corner from Tony Moore was met by Paul to score his second goal in two weeks.
There was still time for the opposition captain to question the referee's culinary skills 'Are you cooking blinds' (or something sounding very similar) after a strong but fair challenge in our box before Mads broke to score a last minute goal.
Job done, not a great performance but into the first round proper! And if we'd managed to avoid the Izakaya after the game (despite whatever you may read on the Clash report) I think we could all have been happy with the way the day went.
Report by Rob Manager
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