Hotsticks bank on early goals to defeat Floriana

Umpires: David Agius, Raymond Micallef

Barely had the teams settled down when Hotsticks took a 2-0 lead within the first five minutes with goals from Steve Portelli and Jonathan Borg.

This stunned Young Stars and for a few minutes their defence suffered sustained Hotsticks pressure. However on 16 minutes, Young Stars were awarded a penalty corner and Mark Camilleri netted to cut Hotsticks lead to 2-1.

Game on - tight marking dominated thereafter for the rest of the half with both teams avoiding midfield and trying to use the direct route to goal with lofted balls or long passes from defensive positions into the opponents D.

Half time was reached with the score unchanged and Hotsticks maintaining their 2 -1 lead. Four minutes into the second half, Camilleri scored his second as a result of a penalty corner action to draw the sides level at 2-2.

On 47 minutes, after a period of Hotsticks pressure, Portelli scored his second to send his side into a 3 -2 lead and three minutes later he completed his hat trick sending Hotsticks 4-2 up.

From then on Young Stars maintained considerable pressure on the Hotsticks rear guard but did not take advantage of six penalty corner awards between the 54th and 68th minutes also missing a couple of goal scoring chances which should have been swallowed up.

Hotsticks by then were content to play out time holding possession and using counter attacks as their tactical weapon as Young Stars’ defence was more exposed towards the end. The final whistle blew with Hotsticks maintaining their 4-2 advantage.