Fell behind here….time to catch up. Sadly, it’s just not a pretty set of games to close out the season.
(All pictures are from the last game, the first-round playoff loss against the Jags)
The last game of the season, again, was indoors against the Jags. We, as a team, don’t play well at that indoor facility. The field is wider and the turf is not a grass-field turf, it’s like a mat on concrete and the ball rolls super-fast….and I don’t think we play on it enough to take advantage of it or even be comfortable on it. The team we inevitably play there, the Jags….they play there all the time.
The coach made a funny decision to have two kids from the white team play with us…for a roster of 15 kids! I think he had made a promise to have one of the boys play on the red team at least once this season, and this was the last game, and had to make good. But that change, and the resulting shuffled line-up, along with the indoor ugliness and some suspect goaltending, and we lose 2-1.
That means that we get to play the same team in the first round of the playoffs….and we are happy, the game will be outside.
We score first, and are winning 1-0 at the half. But we give up two goals in the second half, and don’t score any. And that’s the end of the season.
I’m still a little disgusted at how the season ended….I will maintain that we are better than that. But losses like this make me reconsider everything and I have to remember that Matthew missed a fair bit of practice because of football. Can’t be really upset about anything I guess if we can’t have Matthew there for every practice.
But I don’t think Matthew is the problem either. Some players don’t want to (or can’t) do what the coach wants…every pass with a purpose. And when we don’t pass with a purpose, the balls from those kids just become turnovers.
To be completely fair, the Jags 2 goals were pretty decent goals….both off of set pieces (a free kick and a corner), both kicked to the same kid, who headed in both of them. I think it’s ridiculous that we couldn’t mark him once, and than didn’t do it again for the 2nd goal. Matthew was quick to point out that he wasn’t on the field for either of those goals…..(and I don’t think that’s a good thing that Matthew was all over that observation…but it is what it is).
Indoor soccer begins in a few weeks…….
