| October 9, 2005 | |
| Han River Harriers | 2 |
| Dream Time FC | 4 |
| Goal Scorers: | Georg Engelhardt (1), Guillaume Cario (1) |
| Cards: | Jean Blaise , Frederic Brismontier |
| MoM: | Karl Jackson |
Game Summary (by Dan):
A moment of silence was taken for Jason's father-in-law by both teams before the match at center - and the game was soon underway. To take a quote from the last match report, "Against teams higher in the table, the Harriers would have been punished for such a display", referring to our 'sitters' as they were called - and this proved to be our downfall by full-time in today's match. To start things off, we went to what seemed to me to be the middle of no where. The lovely Korean party/game/fun-time/whatever it was directly beside us with whistle blowing galore, certainly didn't help things any, but both teams had to play through multiple whistle sounds, so I digress. The pitch, for lack of a better word was a sandbox, with a beautiful mud patch at one end (sorry about your luck at ending up at that end Dean). The game starting out with both teams getting a feel for the filth under our feet, but DT soon struck first. Now I know that we win and lose as a team, but not having played for 6 weeks because of a broken finger, I was certainly rusty and out of sorts (even though I felt good to be playing) and the two goals in the first half would never have happened in any game in the past, but they did today, and what's done is done. The 1st goal was struck from an almost impossible angle, and me, not paying attention to my goal mouth, assumed it was going wide and out of bounds, but by the time I realized it wasn't, the score was 1-0. Shortly thereafter, with good pressure from us, DT found themselves ahead by 2 goals after another poorly played ball by yours truly. We certainly didn't let up, and we had chance after chance. Much credit should go to their keeper (Jun Young), and their central defenders (Foad & Muhammud) as they were probably the keys to their success, but we missed enough chances by full-time that we could've overcome their 4-goal effort. We did put a ball away in the middle of the 1st half when Guillaume [season: 5 goals, 4 assists], found Georg[season: 2 goals, 1 assist] who calmly blasted one past their keeper. The 1st half ended with DT up 2-1, but with the chances on goal to be about 6-2 for HRH.
The second half saw us basically control play,
but we seemed to not really bother building on plays, instead we
booted it up field hoping to catch their defenders off guard. None the
less, we still played relatively effectively, and mustered many more chances
(they had 1, count that with your single finger, 1 corner the whole game!),
but too many of our shots went wide or high - those that didn't should
be credited to their keeper. DT's 3rd goal was an own goal as a result
of a poor bounce from the aforementioned pitch. We did manage to
get a goal with about 12 minutes remaining when Guillaume took a redirected
shot from Georg - who gets credited with the assist,
and we found ourselves down by one. In a vain attempt to put on more
pressure, we replaced Kevin (a defender) with a striker, only to concede the
nail in the coffin 4th goal with 5 minutes remaining. 4-2 Dream Time.
*Notes: it's time we took a hard
look at ourselves. Can't keep saying, "We're better than
this," and not proving it. We have to work together up front and
finish, stay focused with crisp passes in the midfield, play cohesively at
the back, and be mistake free between the pipes. It sounds
fundamental, but if we can't do this, we're going to stay middle of the pack
for the rest of the season. Francesco played heroically at the back
today. Their strikers were dangerous. And on a very big
digression, Kevin, Aiden and myself got hopelessly lost after the game and
walked for about 45 minutes trying to hail a cab (by looking for the subway
station at the same time). After discovering the whereabouts of the
station (thanks to some handy nearby policemen), we continued our trek.
The ever alert Big Kebin saw our needle in the haystack and ran across
six lanes of traffic - arms flailing - and hailed the lone unoccupied taxi
we had seen all night ... only to be driven for about 3 minutes to the
subway station - D'oh!