March 23, 2014

Hi Guys,

It has been a long time since we've played Tunghai University so most of us weren't entirely sure what to expect going into today's match, other than the reasonable expectation that our opponents would be better than Feng Chia University, which they were.

Tunghai showed up with what appeared to be a mostly-Taiwanese side, together with a handful of foreign players like Luis, who plays with Tubbies regularly as well as Wed. nights. At the same time, Compass was missing some significant usual contributors including all of its Frenchmen plus Lukas and others. However, we were happy to welcome three "prodigal sons"--Steve, Michael and Ricky--back on the pitch and also had good assistance from Elliot, joining us once again after a hiatus.

The first half wasn't our prettiest or most controlled football, marked by a significant number of times that we were able to get the ball very close to Tunghai's net, but just could not finish for the goals. Michael did set up our first point nicely, when he moved down the line to the right of Tunghai's net and put it across to Cesar for a goal at the 6:30-minute mark. The 25 minutes that followed bore some resemblance to the goalless period in last week's match after the first score. However, Artem and Luis teamed up in the 32nd minute to put together a second nice goal from Luis.

Ricky came on for the second half and immediately made his presence known in the right midfield, speeding up and down that wing and into the box. About 16 minutes into the half, he put a ball to Dennis, who scored. Dennis followed this up at the 52-minute mark when he half-volleyed a beautiful, powerful shot into the net off of a cross from Artem.

Goaded on by a constant stream of encouragement, criticism and advice from Luis, the Tunghai team kept up the pressure and occasionally put some real pressure on our defensive line (Paul, Minjae, Chris, Eugene and, later, Nicky). Steve "The Wall" made a good number of saves, diving onto at least 2-3 close-up shots, and only slipped up once as he tried to dribble out of danger and was caught by a Tunghai player, who scored his team's one goal at 78 minutes. The final 20 minutes of the match saw Compass really click as team and settle into an attractive quick, short passing game. A couple minutes from the end, Ivan scored what would have been our fifth goal, but was called offsides in a debatable decision. This left things 4-1 in our favor at the final whistle.

Yet another good victory today, men!

Doug