Green Turtles Turned Blue are Really Orange

At 5 pm on Friday Tony, the Turtles manager. called me with the bad news. He had two players confirmed and was going to have to cancel the game. I asked him to give me an hour to find enough players to boost his side so we could continue with the match. At a minimum we would take the field without a ref and have a pickup game. 

It didn’t take long for the Orangemen to respond. With Peter coming from Baltimore with of few of his team to augment the Turtles, it would only take another five Orangemen to round out both teams. By six we had 4 of the necessary 5. By 8 pm we had another 9 committed to play. Luckily by game time on Saturday, a few of the 9 had backed down so on balance the total showing to make up the two sides was 26 players. Which is picture perfect on a perfect pitch for the first game of the fall season.

I’ll try to list out the sides to give everyone credit for showing to the match.

Orangemen playing in Orange

Mooch

Gene

Dave N

John Ham

Kendall

J (the Gazelle) Orangemen Guest

Mauricio

Steve H

Jose

Tedd O

Scott R

Tommy

Doug

Kurt

Orangemen Playing in Blue for the Green Turtles

Greg Z

John Herb

Will H

Peter

Orangemen Affiliates playing on the Turtles

John Herb’s friend Troy

Ceasar

Bernie

I would like to thank Tony for not canceling the game. As it was a Turtles home game they were responsible for paying for the ref and Tony took his responsibility seriously. But first we had to work out the colors for the game. Turtles could go either green or white, but there wasn’t more than 3 whites or green to be had. Mooch brought a box of blue practice jerseys but the ref was wearing blue and didn’t want to change. Finally the ref conceded and pulled on his yellow and black and the Turtles were all handed the blue practice tops. It finally looked like the game was going to happen.

Now onto the action.

The final score was 3 to 3. Anyone who has played any soccer at all doesn’t need to know much more. Any game that goes 3 to 3 was bound to be a fantastic match. And it was definitely a great game. We were evenly matched with both a combination of youthful players with some seniors sprinkled throughout both sides.

It was a nice cool night...foreshadowing cool fall evenings yet to come...and some cool rain fell late in the game further given us a taste of a magnificent fall evening.  Here are the highlights I can remember. Kendall had a great one v one with the keeper and scored a goal with outside of his left foot as the keeper charged out. Tommy had a header to score our second goal. But I’m going to split men of the match honors between Jose and John H for alternating between Stopper and Striker.

From the Turtles perspective, they had two questionable offsides calls that brought at least one but maybe two goals that perhaps should have been decided in their favor. However without the help of the ref Gene had a magnificent 1 v 1 save with his face that kept the game tied at 3 apiece.  John Herb played goal for the Turtles in the second half and we learned that even with two bum knees he can really punt a ball...also, he brought his buddy Troy to the match who is a fantastic player and was a significant factor in the Turtles attack. We are going to keep our eye on Troy for a future Orangemen signing. However, the highlight of the Turtles attack came from Casear who somehow got on the end of a cross at speed, and got his left foot up in time so sweep a rocketed cross into the net past Gene.

Tony stayed for the entire match...he said to keep the piece...but later conceded the game was so friendly and well mannered it wasn’t necessary. Again, a special thanks to the Turtles for hosting and letting us have a blast.