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Sigma FC Rallies For Six Over Masters FA Saints

By League1 Ontario staff, 07/08/16, 4:45PM EDT

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Leaford Allen (Photo: Martin Bazyl)

Coming off two successive league losses - the only points dropped by the Misssissauga-based academy all season - Sigma FC returned to winning ways on Thursday night after a comprehensive 6-0 win over Master's FA Saints. 

"It all worked out the way we wanted to," said Sigma head coach, Bobby Smyrniotis. "We had two tough matches the week before this, where things really weren’t clicking and we didn't have much speed to our game. And today we put the responsibility on the players for that and I think they showed up and did a great job."

Nolan Holdridge (6'), Justin Stoddart (21'), Kwame Awuah (33') and Marcel Zajac (36') put the home side ahead by four going into the half-time break, before league leading scorer Leaford Allen (56', 68') added a brace in the second half to ensure the result. Sigma's clean sheet was earned by Joseph Kuta

"Individually we have some fantastic players here who are going to play at the next level," said Smyrniotis. "But sometimes it's one guy waiting on the other guy to perform and today we asked for a performance amongst the group."

"That’s very important to us," he added. "We don't look for goals from one place and tonight they did a great job of that." 

"Allen has also done a great job providing us with 11 goals, but the biggest thing to our strength is that we share the load. And its always good when you can score a lot of goals in the game and its coming from a number of different guys. It brings up their confidence and its going to give us great momentum against Durham on Saturday."

With only a single win and a draw from eleven matches, Masters head coach Andre Savelev observed a dangerous lack of belief in his players after giving up early goals. 

"One of the things that happened to us is that when we missed the first chance and then the second chance its almost like 'here is the story again, the other team is going to score,'" he said.  "And so, you lose your belief. You could see it in the players. Once we lost the first two you could see the players thinking 'when are they going to score?.' That will kill you in football."

With a big L1 Cup semi-final around the corner for Masters, Savelev said attentions were certainly divided between their league matches and the Cup competition. 

"They know our plan is prepping for the Cup," he confirmed. "So we’ll have our players back thankfully. But we have to be in the mode of setting ourselves up to be successful."

"Tonight we set ourselves up in the second half to be successful," he concluded. "But we gave away the first half."

"We aren’t ignoring TFC Sunday, but we are looking forward to the Cup."

Master plays Toronto FC Academy on Sunday July 10 (1 p.m.) at Kia Training Grounds, before meeting Vaughan Azzurri in the semi-finals of the L1 Cup on Wednesday July 13 (8 p.m.) at the Ontario Soccer Centre. 

Still top of the west division and first overall across both men's divisions, Sigma FC head into a difficult league fixture on Saturday July 9 (4 p.m.) at Hershey Centre, Mississauga against Durham United FA - the third place team in the east division.