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Match Recap: TFC III 5 - 0 Sanjaxx Lions

By League1 Ontario staff, 05/29/17, 2:45PM EDT

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Cyrus Rollocks (3', 32') scored a brace, while Matthew Srbely (51'), Ethan Beckford (87') and Luca Petrasso (90' + 1) added singles in a 5-0 rout of Sanjaxx in Matchweek Five. 

TFC III keeper Gianluca Catalano kept the clean sheet, and made it two wins in a row for the Junior Reds - a first in 2017 play.

"It is a good building block for us," said TFC III head coach, Danny Dichio. 

"The results are always important to us as a young team, but they are not as important as the performance."

"Last week we got the win against North Miss but I was not happy with the performance. I asked for a better work ethic today. We spoke tactically about what we wanted to do but I asked for a better work ethic today, a better understanding of working hard for one's teammates, and playing with more tempo. I think we got that today."


Ethan Beckford (Photo: Martin Bazyl)

Dichio was particularly impressed with his team's defensive performance, picking out several players to highlight. 

"We have a very young team," he said. "Rocco [Romeo] and Julian [Dunn] at the back today are both 16 years old and although they are physically men, they are still 16 years old." 

"It was a very good performance from them, and I said to them after the game that, for me, keeping a clean sheet is as big as scoring a goal. That should be the goal for the goalkeeper and defence, and it is a big big thing for a young team to be able to do."


Rocco Romeo, Toronto FC III (Photo: Martin Bazyl)

On the other hand, Sanjaxx coach Devon Porter was not happy with his team's inability to break down the opposition (the Lions are winless in five outings), and pointed to a lack of tactical discipline as the cause. 

"If you are going to sit back and soak up pressure than the other team is going to come at you," he said. "That is not how we train."

"We train to pressure everything. We pressure the ball when we don't have it, when we have it we pressure the opponent with our attack. That is what we train, but we failed to do all of that and when you fail to do that - it will hurt you."

"We just have to reassess everything and get back to the drawing board and see how we can fix this," he added. "I think the first two or three games we played quite well, and even the Cup game against Woodbridge we had something going."

"But if we fail to do what we have trained to do in practice, we are going to have trouble asserting ourselves in the game. That is exactly what happened today."

Toronto FC III will next play Pro Stars FC on Sunday June 4 at Kia Training Ground, Toronto. 

Sanjaxx Lions will next play Sanjaxx Lions on Sunday June 4 at Sheridan College, Oakville.