anything he can do

May as well fire this bad boy up. After all i haven';t been as stoked about anything as much as this indoor soccer season since.....the NHL preseason in September!

I have once again rejoined two teams of historical significance: Team Gigantic (C Division), Even Bigger (D Division).

The season began with an Even Bigger game followed by a one hour pause and than an exhibition preseason game. I've said it before and I'll say it again: double headers are a terrible idea for our team cause we always lose the latter game.

No difference on this night.

The Even Bigger game saw a lot of people show up and lots of offensive production was to be had. A solid defensive effort was made by myself and I felt we earned the 7-3 victory by outpacing and outworking the other team. The giving and recieving of passes was some of the best we've done ever and led to a great number of chances.

The Team G game: take everything positive I said, reverse it, and put my tired ass in net.

Things did not go well as a complete defensive and offensive collapse led to quite a few shots getting behind me. My effort decreased drastically as fatigue and a lack of willingness to throw my body around for 50 minutes in a meaningless game showed up. Good lesson in "why conditioning is key"

But we move on


Team Gigantic played an actual game several days later. We came out of the gates flying, and got on the scoreboard twice early. I set up a dandy goal when I blocked a shot past their attacker and grabbed it and flew up the left side. I made it inside their defensive third before encountering pressure. I spotted a white jersey running up the middle towards the net, stopped turned and fired a blind pass into the box. Shaun made a great run to beat a defender to the ball and one timed a shot which became goal of the season(at the time). But after we scored another I was off the field and forced to switch to Forward to heed demands. While my vision of where to be and where to put the ball was there, the ability for me to set up or score any shots eluded me on this night as glorious chances fell by the wayside in a 5-2 losing effort. I think it should have been closer but the defense really let down the front half, as a lack of challenging balls and shots led to easy goal scoring opportunities.




And then there was last nights game

playing the Smurfs, who I scored one of the classic goals of my career against, we went behind really early on a poor job of defending a free kick. But we bounced back with 2 straight goals to take the lead, only to see it slip away again. Then Rummy had one hell of a goal to retake the lead, which we almost gave up at the very end of the first half on a shot that first deflected off the back of my leg, then off and over Jay's glove and into the net. Fortunately for us the buzzer went sometime during that process. sketch

In the second half I had both a terrible and solid shift. On the terrible shift I headed a ball backwards into our defensive zone instead of out of it. On another play I recieved a pass back, got it jumbled tween my feet and promptly lost possession, only to force a turnover a few seconds later in redemption mode. My last shift of the game i thwarted at least 3 rushes towards our end, clearing it out any way possible. A good game overall

And now to discuss teh game within the game. HOLY TOLEDO these guys were rough....and big. First issue had to do with me being called on a hipcheck in the first half where i guy ran into my stationary self. Weak call but w/e's fabs did alright. Later on there were repreated attempts to set picks on me. I don't like this style and typically go right through them. I played as physically as I ever have, and their 007 returned the favour, as we jostled for position and possession on every go. Late in the first half I blocked a shot by putting my right foot corss body to stop the ball. The gentleman on the other team promptly drove some bony part of his leg into my "gluteus medius" , or somewhere between the ass and kidney for those following at home. My "lower kidney" injurt was a minor deterrance for the rest of the game as adrenaline took over, but rally showed up later on similar to a leg injury I sustained while playing goal in outdoor finals a couple years back

fun times for all