Saunders Oval Ballina hosted a football spectacular worthy of the build-up hype surrounding this year\u2019s world cup with the highly anticipated local derby between the Ballina Seahorses and the Tintenbar\/East Ballina football club. This year is Tintenbar\u2019s first year at premier level status in the FFNC competition and the latent rivalry between the two local clubs proved to be a major incentive to draw supporters from both clubs. The punters arrived in droves populating the famous Saunders balcony with almost record numbers. The game was an entertaining and fast paced affair with the Seahorses prevailing with a hard fought 3 nil victory. The excitement was palpable and it possibly contributed to a clean sweep for all of the senior men\u2019s teams last Saturday (with reserves, fourths and fifths also winning)\u2013 a rare feat indeed.<\/p>\n
Fittingly, Matt Jeffery (with experience playing for both sides) opened the account in the first ten minutes thanks to a deftly placed through ball from the Seahorses flamboyant flanker Nick Key.<\/p>\n
The goal drove the Seahorses supporters into a frenzy prompting them to remove the cobwebs as they were given a history lesson from Jason \u2018the Warbler\u2019 Green and Reece \u2018the Choirmaster\u2019 Ryan who struck up some of the Seahorses top tunes from bygone eras. \u00a0This lifted the intensity and the Seahorses responded with a second goal at the end stage of the first half with Doug Bocking cracking a nice volley from a Dave Bowder cross.<\/p>\n
Tintenbar lifted in the second half and they had several near chances of narrowing the gap; however the Seahorses sealed the result with a spectacular left foot goal from Liam Seymour. The result has boosted Ballina\u2019s chances of sneaking into top five contention; however Tintenbar will have to regroup to ensure they draw away from the bottom of the table \u2013 they have the potential to upset some of the opponents in this year\u2019s comp and Ballina football will benefit if Tintenbar avoid relegation.<\/p>\n
The Seahorses face Workers in an important clash next Tuesday at home 6pm and 8pm kick off \u2013 the Seahorses need to collect some consistency and string together some successive results. Their recent performances have improved largely due to a greater self-belief and stronger resolve on the park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saunders Oval Ballina hosted a football spectacular worthy of the build-up hype surrounding this year\u2019s world cup with the highly anticipated local derby between the Ballina Seahorses and the Tintenbar\/East Ballina football club. This year is Tintenbar\u2019s first year at premier level status in the FFNC competition and the latent rivalry between the two local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2188,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions\/2188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ballinasoccer.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}