Fall Soccer Game 2

You may recall from the last post our team is not yet given a name since we did not have jerseys prior to the first game. We were told we would have jerseys prior to the start of game 2, but game time rolled around and there were none to be found. A mystery indeed.

The mighty men and women of TOIC A took the field with our light jerseys again, determined to reverse the curse of last week. I will call our opponent TOIC C for now just to keep consistent. This week, the field we played on also had the unique pleasure of not having soccer lines on it aside from the touchlines. No goal box, no penalty box and lots of weird dotted lines.

Peter and Bill were going to share goal duties today and were determined to make everyone proud. Peter started the match in goal and played a very good half. The match started slowly for both teams. There was a lot of change of possession in the midfield and few good scoring opportunities for the first 10 minutes or so. TOIC A took the lead on a goal from Bill that was similar to his goal in game 1. So far it looks like Bill is going to have an excellent year offensively and in goal!

There was a play that happened in the first half that seemed quite innocuous at the time, but it foretold of disastrous consequences later so I will tell you now rather than create an even more hideous run-on sentence. One of the TOIC C strikers called for the ball and was a good 2 yards behind our last defender. The ball was played to him in his clearly offside position and I asked the ref to call it. He did not. Luckily, Brian Siever tracked the ball down and did not let the bad call cost us a goal. The ref insisted the player was even with me (the player told me after the game, he knew he was WAY offside) and the ref was quite belligerent. I thought at the time that at least our defense won't have to deal with this ref in the second half. Score at the half: TOIC A 1 - TOIC C 0.

At halftime, we received our jerseys for this season. I kind of poo brown. I don't know who we pissed off in the league office, but man, these jerseys are reminiscent of the Brown Sound episode of South Park. Many ideas were immediately floated for our team name, most of them scatalogical. The only clean one was "mocha". So here is what I will do: When things go well, I will refer to us as Mocha and when things go poorly, we will be Skidz.

The second half featured a lot of weirdness. Having a one goal lead is nice, but it is also precarious. It helps to pick up another goal to give a good cushion for the inevitable strange goal of the day that always seems to happen to us. The action was very tight, but we started to get some chances. Team Mocha extended its lead to 2-0 about 20 minutes into the second half on a controversial goal by Jon Rose. We had played a corner kick into the area. It was semi-cleared by Team Yellow (formerly TOIC C) to one of our players who played it to Jon who was still right by the goal in what looked like offside position. The referee (same one from the first half) did not call offside and when the Yellow players argued with him and tried to explain the rule (which he demonstrated earlier, he does not understand) he gave a red card to their captain (and best defender) and a yellow card to another one of their players.

From there the floodgates opened. Neil scored a few minutes later by practically walking the ball in. Jon Rose added another nice outside shot from the top of the penalty area to the inside of the post. Greg capped Mocha's scoring with about 8 minutes to play. Team Yellow kept fighting hard and got on the board with less than five minutes to play on a header that seemed to have its own eyes for the net. Final score: Mocha 5 - Yellow 1.

A very nice effort from our team. The red card and goal #2 really changed what was a close and fairly even game to a lopsided affair. I can't think of anyone who played poorly on our team today. A great effort all around!