November 11, 2012

Hi Guys,

A big congratulations to the dozen Compass players who made the effort to travel to Hsinchu and were rewarded with an overwhelming 6-1 victory vs. National Chiao Tung University!

As things tend to go with Compass for away games, Sunday got off to a frustrating start before we even left the parking lot, due to 3 players who cancelled at the last minute and another player who was injured and unable to play. We were saved humiliation of playing short-handed by Ben, who pleasantly surprised us by joining the Sunday squad, and by Atsushi, who also turned up for his second match with Compass. This gave us a total of 1 sub for the entire game.

Playing on Chiao Tung's decent pitch under cloudy skies and cool temperatures, Compass started on an aggressive note against a decent squad made up of a mix of foreign and Taiwanese players (including Cesar's brother). Perhaps frustrated over last week's result, we quickly made our mark, starting with a goal by Artem and followed by further points from Robert, Ben and two in a row from Cesar, leaving Compass up 5-0 in the first half.

Although Compass' domination of the pitch continued in the second half, Chiao Tung never gave up. Five minutes after Ben scored our sixth and last goal of the match at 51 minutes off a nice through-ball assist by Atsushi, Chiao Tung was able to drive down our left wing to put in a goal. The game ended 6-1, as noted above, and we all enjoyed downing an ice chest full of cold beer, as I promised.

The overall tone of the game was friendly and their coach told me that they were missing several of their key players due to exams. He added that they are very willing to come down to Taichung for a follow-up game soon, which is nice. I thought our side played well and would like to make a special welcome to Javi, playing his first match in net for us.

While we pat ourselves on the back on this victory, we should also realize that we are certainly not playing anywhere near our best football yet and certainly not yet ready for PE College in two weeks' time. Once again, we need to refocus on our short ground-passing game and there are ways we need to tweak our offensive and defensive play. We also need to play with our full normal squad out there, so that we can figure out positions and get used to working with each other. We have one more game to do that--next Sunday vs. Chung Hsing University--so I hope that most of you are IN.

GO COMPASS!

Doug