McMahon, North Penn overpower Germantown Academy

TOWAMENCIN >> Luke McMahon wanted to give his team some kind of spark.

As he and the rest of North Penn’s boys soccer team warmed up ahead of their match against Germantown Academy on Tuesday, McMahon saw some tired legs. The Knights, less than 24 hours removed from a win over Central Bucks South and down a handful of injured players, were rightly feeling it.

So McMahon made sure they had plenty of energy by scoring the first of his three goals in the first 40 seconds of play.

McMahon’s hat trick, a dominant midfield and strong defending led the Knights to a 4-1 win over the visiting Patriots.

“It gave us a lot of energy,” the junior striker said. “In the warm-up I could tell some of our guys were looking a little tired after last night, so to get an early goal and an early lead against a good team like GA was big for us.”

McMahon was a constant thorn in the side of GA’s defense, with his constant work rate leading to plenty of chances in front of goal. But the hard-working forward can’t do anything without the ball and he saw plenty of it thanks to a dominant midfield effort led by Carter Houlihan, Jack Johnston and Aidan Jerome.

In the first half, it felt like the Knights (8-1-0, 4-1-0 SOL Continental) won every ball in the air and just as importantly, every second ball after an initial win. The only reason the score wasn’t lopsided at half was the play of GA keeper Jamie Werther. Werther, who is taking over after a season-ending injury to GA’s starter, made eight saves, including three in a roughly 45-second span against Jerome, McMahon and Mike Chaffee.

“We’re working on a new formation and we’re still working out the kinks,” GA coach Brendan Sullivan said. “Most of our nonleague games are tough games, and we schedule that purposely to get us ready for the Inter-Ac, which is what we concentrate on.

“Jamie made a couple nice saves, he certainly filled in admirably. It’s the same thing for him, he’s still learning the system and what the expectations are.”

As for the work his midfielders did, McMahon knew he would have plenty more chances to cash in.

“It makes everything a lot easier,” McMahon said. “We’ve been playing really well lately, we’re on a really good hot streak and when they’re able to win these balls and find me through, it’s amazing having guys like that.”

Luke McMahon on counter with shot saved pic.twitter.com/R1bRlsAzJY

— Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3) September 26, 2017

With a couple of key players out injured, the Knights back line was a little patchwork, but more than held its own and limited GA to just two shots on goal. Knights coach Paul Duddy made sure to credit their work in front of keeper Joey Lindsay, saying it shouldn’t get buried under McMahon’s hat-trick.

Senior Matt Farrell, normally a striker, played right back for North Penn on Tuesday and was influential both in clearing balls from the back and using his attacking instincts to bomb forward and create.

“I think it’s the build-up of previous years,” Farrell said. “We’ve always been a tight-knit team, so I think it’s just the chemistry we have. It’s always there and always good.”

McMahon scored two minutes into the second half after a special build-up that saw at least six players put a foot on the ball in the sequence. Johnston started the play with a long ball out of the midfield that Farrell touched back inside with it getting knocked around until James Stewart threaded the final ball into McMahon.

With the sun blazing down, North Penn kept it as simple as possible, playing one, two or three quick touches before a pass to keep the ball moving.

“We can forward quickly if it’s time to do that, but we’re pretty good at knocking the ball around,” Duddy said. “It’s good soccer. We’ve been finding each other in possession. Early on, we struggled to get some goals but the last four or five games, it’s really come around.”

GA on the other hand, tried to dribble the ball against North Penn, which not only tired out the Patriots players on the field, but played right into the high-intensity style the Knights wanted to impose.

“I’ve known Duddy for years and his teams are always going to be aggressive, and not just to the first ball but the second ball,” Sullivan said. “That’s a testament to him and his coaching style. You saw it today, and that was my halftime talk, forget the first ball, we’re not even at the second ball. It’s really about desire half the time.”

McMahon finished his hat-trick in the 74th minute after another lovely bit of build-up between the forward and Houlihan. A couple of give-and-gos interchanged the two, with Houlihan sending McMahon home on a well-weighted ball.

“It definitely saves energy, we work on a lot of technical stuff at practice so we can perfect our play,” McMahon said. “We know it will eventually save us energy. We knew we were dominating the second half and as early as we came out and got the second one, it let us free-flow from there.”

Chaffee capped the scoring in the 75th minute off a throw-in deep down the right side in GA’s end.

Things don’t get easier for the Knights, but with seven straight wins to their credit, they’re just looking to stay true to themselves.

“We always work hard to get the first goal and from there, we’re always going after more,” Farrell said. “All of our games have been high-scoring games because we’re looking to wear teams down and put some in.”

NORTH PENN 4, GERMANTOWN ACADEMY 1
NORTH PENN     1 3 – 4
GERMANTOWN ACADEMY 0 0 – 0
Goals: NP – Luke McMahon, McMahon (James Stewart), McMahon (Carter Houlihan), Mike Chaffee.