September 29, 2013

Hi Guys,

I think everyone enjoyed Saturday night's match vs. the Morrison varsity team. Terry's young lads were very fit and aggressive and played well, and the home crowd was certainly cheering for them. Nevertheless, Compass played did a good job adjusting to the faster-than-usual pace and pulled off a 4-0 win.

Given the superior fitness of our opponents, it was fortunate we turned up with 15 guys, including Cesar's brother Ivan, who has now moved to Taichung and will be playing with Compass (welcome!) and one of our long-lost keepers, Frenchman Eric, who kept a clean sheet for Compass despite some Morrison pressure on our net. Both Mat (in his second appearance for Compass) and Ivan were a good help to Ben and Cesar on the front line. It was also nice to have Oto and Lukas back on the pitch with us after their summer break.

It was Cesar who got our first goal 10 minutes in. At the 28th minute, Oto circled around the perimeter of the box to put another one in from the left side. Exactly 10 minutes later, we were awarded an indirect kick and Oto scored one of the nicest goals of its type I've seen from us, blasting it over the Morrison wall and into the top left corner. Although the keeper got his hand on it, the referee said that he touched it after it crossed the line and thus ruled it a no-goal. In my book, though, it was still an amazing goal.

It was our team's consensus that the Morrison guys played very well and weren't intimidated by Compass. Thus, our players were under constant pressure from them throughout the game, giving us less time than we're used to on the ball(which was good practice). The second half was a tough battle that saw no goals until about the 80th minute, when Oto got his second official goal, followed a few minutes from the final whistle by a Morrison own-goal that occurred under heavy Compass pressure.

I thought the game was a good experience and practice for both sides. Now we can look forward to the Taipei tournament this coming weekend. I'll send out a separate email about this.

Again, good job, Compass!

Doug