Saturday, June 25, 2005

Soccer result for today

We drew 2-2 in our outside game today. Although we were a better team skillwise the other team was mostly older and larger blokes who played pretty dirty and a physically intimidating game. As we have 5 young fellas who are under 17 on our team I thought we played fairly well in difficult circumstances. I had my work cut out for me marking the two forwards along with the other center back, neither of whom kicked a goal in play. The guy I spent most of the game shoving around took a penalty kick with 5 minutes to go to level 2-2 with us after we had gone ahead 2-1. Fortunately I didn't give away the free kick, and it was a soft penalty also. The ref was young and inexperienced and only gave one free kick all day for shoving, and that was against me. He ignored all the major shoves and after about 15 minutes I gave in and started being physical also. I really muscled up to the forward who was about 10kgs lighter than me and just muscled him off all the high balls and headers. We were constantly in each others face but it was surprisingly friendly and there was no animosity felt. I think we both realised that we played a good game. I actually scored the first goal against us - an own goal from a corner kick that came in and the forward shoved me and ran for it. I took him out from behind by slamming my body into his in a poorly disguised attempt at the ball causing him to crash onto our keeper squashing him. In the process the ball bounced between them and hit my knee richochetting into the goal. To be fair to me the guy did use both his hands to shove me and the ref didn't see it leaving me behind him.
I don't like playing dirty but if the ref isn't going to call it and the other team is out to hurt the young guys on our team than I am not afraid to use my muscle to hurt them back. This same guy took out one of our young fellas last time we played them with a poor tackle from behind.
From that time I used all the opportunities to go at high balls as a chance to run at them and crash down on them from above. This tactic became fairly successful with me winning most of these challenges and eventually them leaving me to get it with out challenging.
Can't wait for the next game!


Posted by: Jethro | 8:51 PM |