Wairarapa United defence slammed

As final dress rehearsals go it could hardly have been any worse.
That pretty much summed up the attitude of Trust House Wairarapa United football coach Phil Keinzley after his team's 5-4 defeat by Olympic in a "friendly" played in Carterton on Saturday.
Keinzley was hot at the number of inexcusable defensive errors made by Wairarapa United in what was their last serious hit-out before they open their 2011 Central League campaign with a match against Lower Hutt City at Queen Elizabeth Park, Masterton, next Sunday.
"Defensively we were appalling, that's all you could say about it ," he said. "There were holes all over the place, it was shocking stuff."
So weak was the defensive performance that Keinzley reckons Olympic would have racked up a double figure scoreline but for the brilliance of Wairarapa United keeper Mark Borren, who pulled off several outstanding saves. "God knows how many goals they might have got without him [Borren] ... it doesn't bear thinking about."
Keinzley wasn't impressed either with the amount of negative talk emanating from the Wairarapa United players over the course of the 90 minutes.
"You'd expect better from a group of 8-year-olds ... nobody seemed to want to take responsibility for what was happening out there. It was like it was everybody's fault but their own. Obviously there was a lot of frustration but it doesn't help to have players mouthing off at each other. They have to respond a whole lot better than that."
Scoring four goals against an Olympic team which is always a serious contender for Central League spoils would normally be seen as a plus for Wairarapa United but Keinzley's believes that most of the goals came more through sloppy Olympic defence than anything else.
"Frankly their defensive effort was about as poor as ours. They will be asking the same questions as us about that part of their play", he said. Keinzley admits Saturday's performance has him doing some serious thinking about the make-up of his side for the league opener with the need to enhance the structure and organisation on defence the primary objective.
"It doesn't matter how good the attack, if you are leaking goals at the other end you are always going to be playing catch up," he said. "It's not a matter of not having players with the skills to do a decent job, it's more of getting them in the right frame of mind to do it."
Two players who definitely won't be taking the field are German Sascha Backer and Somalian Faisal Salad. Backer has yet to arrive in Wairarapa while transfer difficulties have ruled Salad out for the season.