Orangemen vs Arlington March 2014

It’s March and as we wait for yet another WInter Storm the Orangemen played a make-up game against Arlington that we originally canx back in January.

We played at 7 pm at Gunston in Arlington, Don, was very kind and grabbed the field for us so we wouldn’t get stuck with a 9 pm game at Bryant.

At game-time the temperature was still hovering around 43 degrees so it was decent playing weather.  

This was our last official game of the Winter season.  We have two weeks before the Spring Season officially begins.  Next week I will schedule a game just to get in a run.  I think we are playing Chantilly, but stand-by it might be Springfield.

Team last night:

Gene - Keeper

Jan - Sweeper

Maurico - Stopper

Karl, George, Greg - fullbacks

Alfredo, Scott F, Cris, Tommy,  Mooch - Midfield

John H, Kendall, Wil - Strikers

We lost 1 - 3 to Arlington...we didn’t do too badly we just didn’t seem to be able to find that one more pass in the top ⅓.  In general our passing all day was flat.  I can’t remember a single string of three consecutive passes.  And most of the passes we did make were intercepted.  It’s not that Arlington was fast, we stood and waited for a ball that was never gonna make it to us.  So it appeared everyone simply didn’t want to work too hard last night...and we paid the price.

Gene kept us in the game, but just barely.  He made 3 or 4 spectacular saves that otherwise we would have been in a blowout and I would be a lot more critical of our performance.

The defense played well for us too.  They were put under a lot of pressure and Greg, Jan, Mauricio, George, and Karl came up big for us.  Mauricio get’s player of the match last night.  Not only was he in key places to defend...and save one big goal that was curling in under the cross bar on a goal kick, he somehow headed it out coming from beneath it at the last moment, he was clearing a lot of balls with his head, and even got forward to place a few headers on our opponents net.  Mauricio looked the fittest on the team last night...the winter months don’t seem to have faded him.  

Jermaine was in attendance to watch the game last night.  Jermaine turns 30 in 5 months.  I intend to begin inviting him to matches but first I will ask the other managers early in the week if we can let our 29 year old gazelle play.  I think it’s time to get him wearing orange.