Travelers (3) vs Harvey Surveying (3) - part II

May 30th, 2007 - Abbe Road, East Windsor, CT

The Good: Well at least we didn't lose. We were losing 3-0 and a lot of people thought we were gonna run out of time and Harvey was gonna walk away with the win, leaving us near the bottom of the standings. But we didn't give up in a rough, tough and physical match.

The Bad: We didn't win either. We spot them 2 goals in the first half, and then start the 2nd one off slow and let them get another. We NEED to play the full 90 mins. We need to forget the ref and play our game. I can go on and on, but hopefully we've learned our lesson. Leave the refs alone. Play 90 mins.

The Ugly: The cut on Derek's left eye. Gordon's right knee. Their fouls in the penalty area, and ours, and all the ones the ref missed. Like I said it was a physical game and I'm happy to have got at least 1 point from them after the 3 goals we gave up. Before the game I seriously thought we'd win. Maybe we were over confident.

After their big guy got the red card you saw how that their offensive was in MUD. They did nothing. They rely on him way too much. Derek (or any other volunteer) get sucker punched in the 1st half when we play them again. Mentally I think we knew we had a man advantage and we stopped KICKING it forward and actually built up an attack and created quality scoring chances. We don't need to be a man up to do that!

For some strange reason the schedule says we need to play these guys again! I hope we REMEMBER that in both of the games this year when we stop their big forward they are a different team and easier to attack on. NEW GUYS - this is the team that beat us in a PK shootout in last year's playoffs. So we've tied them in the last 3 games we've played, ALL of which we have come back from 2 goals down.

I was talking to my dad this morning and I told him about our situation. Slow Start, Strong Finish. He said it's a classic case of our team having more endurance than the other. Or in our case a deeper bench. How do we get past the slow start? Get to the game early and warm up. If you haven't broken a sweat you're not warmed up. RUN RUN RUN, we have the players, they don't let's run harder in the 1st half and avoid the opposing teams early goals. I can't stress this enough.

As always all feedback comments are welcome.

Record:
1 - Win
2 - Lose
2 - Tie

Goals:
2 - Patrick Nevins (1 pk)
1 - Gordon Hines (pk)

Goals to date:
2 - Brian Zehnder (1 pk)
2 - Gordon Hines (1 pk)
2 - Patrick Nevins (1 pk)
1 - Derek Cedar
1 - Kalee Moore