Arrive back on-site at 9:30 am for the first game of the elimination round. There are seven teams; we are the #3 seed and face the #6 seed to start off. There’s a sense of fatalism hanging around this morning; the team we lost to yesterday is not the #1 seed (in the other side of the bracket) but the #2 seed, so, we play them in the semi-final game and will most likely be going home after that.
Game Four: Playing Firepower; the tallest team we’ve played yet. It’s 1-0 at halftime.
This highlight, featured before, was the first goal of the game. Just a magical play by Matthew, from the move that he made to get the ball away from the kid who was driving in towards our end (his move was so good that you can hear the other parents, who are cheering, just stop when he makes it and the kid on the other team trips over himself trying to recover) towards his dance up the sideline before he centers the ball for the tap-in.
I missed it, and I guess I should go back to the tape to hear it, but afterwards Cpher was adamant that they should have ruled Matthew out of bounds and it shouldn’t be a goal. Not very supportive there, but, I think it more centered from his understanding of the rule (ball on the line is in, even if your body is not).
For a game that Matthew absolutely dominated, this is the one photo we have of him in that game.
But, there is some video…
Here’s another goal. I’ve asked Matthew to take the majority of the free kicks so that a) we could get more people up front and b) he could do his thing. Here’s another example of Matthew doing his thing.
Another perfect pass leads to a goal. Just holds the ball long enough to draw the guy forward
Game Five: Back at it against the boys and the girls…..told the boys the same message I’ve hammered home for months…..you play your hardest, you hustle, win or lose, you’ll still be THINGS!
Guess I should have borrowed some of these lines…..
Get off to a great start; we score the first goal and go up 1-0. They come back and score the next three (one of them a goal that we never should have given up, just centered the ball on defense for them AGAIN, and they did what must happen to Things when Things do that), and then we score again (on a sweet pass by Matthew) and it’s 3-2 at the half.
This was an ugly moment, but we got the ball out of there…….
This encounter with a girl in the middle of the field didn’t end so well….not sure where he started from, whether he was rushing in to stop here or to try and go by her. But, the deflection here goes out of bounds….
Switched ends for the second half…..told them to keep playing like Things should play and Things won’t be upset with their effort at the end of the game. Matthew again does booting the ball out of our end on a goal kick.
Told Matthew, after about five minutes gone (in a 10-minute half) that I needed him to try and push forward more because we needed a goal. These three photos are one of these efforts, he wins the ball and gets off a long-distance shot, that I recall just trickled wide…..
Another rush forward…..I recall this being a shot when I thought it should have been a pass….you can’t score from the other side of midfield by the rules. I didn’t ask him, maybe he was intending a pass with it.
They scored as we were pressing to tie and made it 4-2 and that was the final. Things were sweaty, mad, sad, but proud of their efforts. This team went on to win the final 3-0 (I’m pretty sure we could have taken the other team to….).
