Sunday, September 9, 2012

And Field Justice for All...


The Vienna Metros are a good team.  We’ve always struggled with them.  However last night, under the lights at Lake Fairfax Park, the Metros had help from league appointed referee. Help they didn't particularly need.  We don’t chart the games or track the calls and we don’t have instant replay.  When appeals to the ref don’t seem to have any effect, we have no other recourse but to talk about things like, “Field Justice”.   And expecting to win a game on field justice alone is like Al Pacino trying to win a case in Judge Rayford’s court room…it just ain’t gonna happen...

After the ball rolled out of bounds and the ref didn’t blow his whistle, and the Metro’s continued down the field to score their first goal, I thought to myself as I appealed to the ref, this is going to be a long game.   After I picked myself up off the ground for a third time I looked over at the ref for a call, and he waived me off as if I was “out of order” for even asking…I thought to myself, ”I’m out of order, I’m out of order…this whole game is out of order.”  And so it would be a loss for the Orangemen…in a game where we could have hung on…perhaps not won but hung on.  Instead we were handed, by the court of referee “I’m never going to blow my whistle, instead I’m going to make a motion with my hands but you’re not going to know what it means because I’m only going to talk in whispers”, another humiliating defeat.  The final score was 7 to 2 at the hands of the Metro’s and their midfield holding style of play.

No other team in the league holds the midfield like the Metro’s do.  They win every ball in midfield.  They consider it a humiliation if during a goal kick they don’t win the ball the air.  They’ve be winning balls in the air for as long as I can remember.  Ben, gave them a pretty good run for their money in the air, but the rest of us stood flat footed and watched them step up, step in, or step through us (without a call) to win just about every cleared ball.  They played well.  I can’t fight the feeling that on dry night with a dry ref, it would have been a different story.

We did score two, Jose finished a penalty kick in the first five minutes of the game for a clear hand ball in the box…the first of only two calls that went in our favor last night.  And Andy, our visiting striker from the “Indoor Champion’s of San Diego” charged in on a long shot from Ben that was tipped by the keeper and off the crossbar that dropped onto his charging run.  This should be a lesson to all strikers to charge into the box no matter where they think the ball is going.  This of course was call number two, as the ball hit the lower cross bar with appeals from the Metro’s that it struck part of the goal that was out of play.

Everybody played well last night…I didn’t notice any major mistakes.  The Metro’s had three goals that were unstoppable.  They had a couple goals the came from scrambles in the box, as a result of striking the wood work and being able to finish what was left, and Gene missed a few that he would have covered on a dry night with a dry ball.  That very quickly adds to seven.  On balance, field justice didn’t come close to saving us last night.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for keeping their cool.  Nobody yelled at the ref or took their frustration out on the other team.    We are still in a building year…and we’ve had a look at some good players and had some moments of brilliance that will manifest later this season.  Don't forget next week is family night.

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