March 18, 2012

Playing with a stripped-down team, Compass did well to pull off a comfortable 4-1 win over Taibei FC. A young, fairly-fit Korean side turned up to play against a 13-man Compass side in our warmest, muggiest match of the year so far. Not having done much warming up before the game, we took a while to get into our rhythm but then settled down, particularly after the 19th minute when Ben used a little head side-flick to put the ball over the keeper and into the net. Cesar doubled the score on the 33rd minute on a short back-pass assist by Gaetan.

The Koreans never gave up and came out hard in the second half, but couldn't prevent a third goal about 10 minutes in when Cathal scored off a lead pass by Ben. Taibei's only goal arrived just over three minutes later on a shot from the right that went into the Compass net. Otherwise, our defense, ably anchored in the center by David and Clement, didn't give them much to threaten us with. However, throughout the game we did struggle a bit with the Koreans' offsides traps that foiled several good efforts, although part of the problem was a linesman who seemed to calling offsides from the point that players received passes. This resulted in the voiding of what looked like a perfectly fine goal by Ben on the 18th second-half minute. Compass made up for this five minutes later on a goal by Cesar, who received a short pass after a fast-break by Ben.

After a 20-minute rest the Koreans (assisted a bit by Marin) played a rather hung-over, lackluster Tubbies side. The first half ended 1-1 and the game could really have gone either way until the last quarter when fatigue finally took its toll on the Koreans (who started randomly lying down on the pitch), allowing two more goals by Sal and a 3-1 final score.

Now it's time to look toward our next Central League match, against Kaohsiung Massive here at home this Sunday at 3 p.m. Massive has been in good form lately and we can anticipate a tough match from them, so I hope most of you can make it.

GO COMPASS!

Doug