Chantilly crushed us...no real explanation other than the cold. We had a good side...we just were not firing on all cylinders...and Chantilly was there to play, despite the cold.
The ref was also working against us...he wasn’t interested in calling early fouls as his philosophy was to let the game go on as long as anything egregious didn’t happen. The times I stopped to talk to him, his version of the play wasn’t even close to what I saw, so how do you argue with that? He’s not going to reverse his decision if he saw something completely different from what everyone else on the pitch observed. The best we can hope for is he simply calls every foul...regardless what occurred...just stop play and restart...without really sorting out whose fault it was etc. And hopefully the aggression would settle down.
Case in point...their man Jose, runs into the box, Mikey keeps pace with him, and reaches around to put his right foot on the ball to clear it over the end line. Jose clearly reaches out with his right arm and pushes Mikey to the ground. Refs awards a corner kick because Mikey cleared the ball out of bounds. But Jose is screaming about a slide tackle, even though the only reason Mikey was on the ground was because he pushed him to the ground. The ref even says, “If you want a foul, then the foul is on you”, meaning Jose. But then he still awards the corner kick to Chantilly. Fast forward 5 minutes. Exactly the same play, Jose runs into the box, Mikey pursues, this time even more committed to staying on his feet, as he turns the corner and get’s his foot on the ball, Jose reaches out even further, and stiff arms Mikey to the ground. This time, everybody on the field is expecting Jose to get the penalty, because it was the identical play, and the ref already told him the penalty would be on him. Then the refs signals a penalty kick for Chantilly. It was a stupefying decision...
So my question...to you Orangemen... is what value is there in talking to a referee, who isn’t watching the same game that we are? This happened over and over again...he would blow the whistle...everyone would expect the foul to be going one way, and he would signal the foul in the opposite direction. Again, the only thing that was achieved was a halt in play, that signalled something bad had happened, so whatever it was, don’t do it again. So, in the end, it did quell the aggression...but it didn’t solve the problem with the ref last night. I’m glad we played, it was good to run, even in the cold. We welcomed Ben back for a good run, and Cris just got off the plane from Chile to join us.
So aside from the highly irregular ref...it just wasn’t our night. The average age of the Orangemen is probably 10 years higher than the average age of the Chantilly players. And I suspect, when you are playing in the cold, every degree drop in temperature, gives a younger team just that more advantage. I can’t prove it...it just seems that way. And based on the chart above, we have a disadvantage across the board, due to our age, but if we are ever gonna have a fighting chance...we need a good spring or fall day with temperatures between 60 and 70.
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