SCOTLAND YARD NEWS: Hope Match
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Written by: Jason Stanley, Assistant Coach
Monday’s training went well as we continued to play alternating 9 v 9 games in a Champions League type format. We were a little banged up from Saturday’s game against Olivet, but no major injuries were sustained in the match. On Tuesday, we had our inaugural Halloween Costume practice at the game field. Players (and coaches) dressed in their Halloween outfits for a light-hearted yet productive training. Costumes ranged anywhere from several Captain Jack Sparrow pirates to ninjas to girls in dresses, bikinis and cheerleading outfits (come to think of it, there were an awful lot of our guys dressed as girls??). Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World even showed up and hopped in goal for us. I think everyone had a good time with it and was able to have a good laugh before a tough contest the following day against Hope.
Hope came to town on Wednesday afternoon and showed us early why they are vying for the 2nd place spot in the conference. We watched as they slotted home three unanswered goals in the first 25 minutes. Once we settled down and decided we were going to play a bit, we managed to get one back and finish out the half strong, down 3-1 at the intermission. We gave up a goal fairly early in the second period and things started to look bleak, but with a few sparks off the bench, we decided that we were going to start playing hard, tackling hard, and try to come back and make this a game. Mark Daisy closed the deficit to 4-2 with his second tally of the day and it looked like we were starting to come back into the game. But, we missed a close chance with about 15 minutes to play and shortly after Hope came down and scored their fifth goal of the contest making it 5-2.
The boys fought hard until the very end, and I think that is something to be proud of. We’re just still fighting the bad habit of coming out slow and soft in the opening half of games so we often find ourselves clawing back from deficits in the second half. Hope is definitely a good side, and I think we showed in the 2nd period that we can play with them. We just need to continue to work on putting two good halves together.
Our final contest of the season is on Saturday against Albion. We took a close one from them at their place in overtime earlier in the season so it should be a tough rematch. Game time is at 2:00 p.m.
Posted: Wed, November 7th, 2007 at 12:45AM
