Last Updated: Saturday, 6 January 2007
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A team’s
performance in football is substantially caused by three things:
talent, effort, and tactics. Last year, especially towards the end
of the year, Coveside out-talented our opponents and, more often
than not, also outworked them. (We’ve never had tactics). This past
Sunday on a miserable morning at Confederation Park, we were
out-talented, out-worked, and “out-tacticed” by a much-improved
Norvan team who coasted to a totally deserved 4-0 victory over
10-man Coveside. The best moment of the day, from our perspective, came when the recently oft-concussed Gord showed up for the pre-game warm-up with his bike helmet on. And it was good to see newly old guy Brad out following his knee surgery. Another funny moment came when CSI-Vancouver was spotted scouting the game, not from the field or the stands, but from the top of a grassy knoll beside the road. (Two things are funny about that: first is the idea of scouting an over 30’s soccer game in horrible weather, the second is the idea that someone would prefer to scout an over 30’s soccer game incognito). Anyway, the bad moments for Coveside started when we heard who wasn’t at the match. Among the missing was the one-man-team Rosie, and the roof on Gino’s Miata must have been leaking because he was a no-show. A blown water pump prevented Randy J from coming (unless “blown water pump” is a euphemism, I’m not exactly sure why this was the case). Al Roberts and the fire department refused to leave the station until the turbidity levels in the water fell substantially. There was nary a Dhaliwal in sight. And when you factor in the long-term injuries to a number of players, including Eamon, Fergie and Jason, along with the gone-and-very-much missed Mike and Martine, you see why we were out-talented by a Norvan team who has added some strong players. We started with Cloudy in net, Dave H and Richie in the middle of defense, with Randy A on one side and Doc on the other. Cam and Rob Paul started in the middle with Rod on the right and Speerslasher on the left. JC and Cormac started up front. Tim and Gord headed our contingent of subs. Eddie ran back from New York but wasn’t quite ready to play, and Ken and Andy’s sore backs kept them out of the lineup. I thought that the work-rate of the guys who did get to the match was pretty good. It wasn’t to blame for the first Norvan goal, where a clever cross to the far post was blown by the gusting wind into just the right spot for a Norvan forward to tap in. And it couldn’t be blamed for the second goal, when Chef Psychochucker, responding to an unpunished but slightly dodgy tackle from Norvan, had a sudden rush of blood to his head and kicked the Norvan player in our penalty area, bringing a justified red card and a penalty. The penalty was tucked away superbly by the Norvan forward and it was 2-0 Norvan with us down to ten men. But when we were down to ten men, it was bloody difficult to keep working hard. And we had very few subs due to so many guys missing the game. Also, with attendance being so bad at practice this year, our fitness isn’t where it should be. So while, a couple of weeks ago, Nordic had the depth and fitness to battle us to a 2-2 tie even with 10 men, we didn’t have enough of either. That being said, facing a 2-0 deficit at half-time, we still felt like we were in with a chance. We’d had a couple of chances in the first half, and if the low shot that Richie had pinged off the post had gone in, we’d have felt pretty good about things. But on the tactics side, we were lost. First, we’ve never really had a system to play in, and with so few guys showing up to practice, there hasn’t been any opportunity to put a system into place. Second, since so few guys have been at practice we haven’t had much time to play together and to drink beer together afterwards to get to know each others’ tendencies and livers. And third, with so few guys showing up for the game we had lots of players in unfamiliar positions with no way of knowing where to go on the field. So our tactics mostly consisted of what they have all year: playing the long ball up the field and hoping to catch a break. We did give it a shot to play the ball around, but with only three in the middle and two up front, usually whoever received the ball had few or no options. But we gave it a shot, and we did create some chances. There were a few really good saves made by the Norvan keeper to keep us off the scoresheet. But when we started pushing up the field to get back into the match, we left ourselves open at the back. This led to two late, well-taken goals by Norvan, whose passing and finishing was pretty damn good. They could yet give Nordic a run for the league title with the squad they had out today. As for us, we’ll be lucky to win half of our remaining games if we don’t get things together. And by getting it together, I mean in the three areas of talent, effort, and tactics. First off, let’s hope we get some guys back from injury, and that we get everyone out to games. For effort, we need guys to come to practice and to games so that we have the fitness to work hard and the depth to give guys a rest during games. And for tactics, we need to get enough guys out to practice that we can start working on some systems so that everyone knows where they are supposed to be on the field. If we do all that, we will be the ones giving Nordic a run for the league championship. If we don’t, we’ll be out of contention before Christmas and hoping to squeak into the Provincials. Finally, with that long rant of a match report after with, from what I know about Coveside, it’s always been about the beers and the laughs. And the beers and laughs were still there after the game, as were some fantastic sausages cooked up by the Red Chef Crazychucker. But beers always taste better after winning, and the laughs are better when they’re shared by guys who are coming out every week to enjoy the football and the company. Hopefully we can get back to that at practices and at games. |
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