Polonia 0, Wolfpack 1--now with actual recap

Just calling it now.  We always play them well.  This is the result I foresee.  Bet Polonia +350 where you can

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Alright, so my drunk prediction did not pan out.  Got the Wolfpack score right, anyhow.  

I'm going to keep this one relatively short.  Also, I apologize to anyone offended by recent posts of mine which may or may not have been viewed before deletion.  I am a big fan of the BDSL and I don't want to antagonize anyone associated with the league.  Friendly 'guarantees' like the one from this thread are a different story.  There are only two people in the world who can claim to have saved me from drowning in a backyard swimming pool.  One of them plays for Wolfpack--midfielder Michael Simoncelli.  (The other person who can make that claim is a non-BDSLer who assisted in the same incident, heh...I believe this was at age eight or so, at a Simoncelli house party to celebrate the culmination of the West Seneca summer soccer season).  So between that and the fact that Wolfpack defender John Augustyn and I used to play floor hockey at now-defunct 14 Holy Helpers Extended Day Program (the school being the defunct thing, not just the afterschool program)...I really can't ever have a problem with this team.

I wasn't in a great mood for this game, and that will affect my ability to recall some of the details.  For Polonia, the Andrews bros were back from tapping the Rockies with all terrain vehicles, and seeing as all our fortysomething midfielders were out due to injury, we thus had the most defense-heavy squad we've ever fielded and likely will ever field.  Miroslaw Chalupka is a bit of a utilityman, but if you consider him a natural defender like I do, and if you also consider debut-making Jeremiah Strickland a defender (as Chuck does), then that means that our squad for Sunday's game featured 8 defenders, 2 goalkeepers, 3 midfielders, and 1 striker.  No wonder this game was 1-0, eh?

Wolfpack brought a large pack of Galifianakises (1. who am I kidding, I'm the Galifianakis here; 2. spellcheck, don't redline me on "Galifianakises"...I only checked it four times now) to hang around their bench, but as for actual players...I'm not sure.  I still think they had like 17.  Plus or minus two.  If they had 14 or less, then they did a great job fooling me.  I saw many of the usual suspects, but Ben Tsujimoto pointed out a few of their major additions in his latest column for buffalonews.com, and as one of them scored their goal, I guess I know who to identify....

And that goal came early.  Rademaker told me he heard shouts ten seconds in, from the adjacent field.  Exaggerated though that might be, my memory is off enough where I actually thought the Wolfpack goal might've come slightly after the moment of silence, but I could definitely see it having been, say, 5 mins in.  So eerily reminiscent of the Niagara game--first goal coming from a chip, nearly the same distance out (20-25ish yards, center-right of the arc at the top of the 18)...this one, I thought Derek might block (he couldn't have been more than a half-step from doing so-he was right next to Mr. Castine as he unleashed his well-placed shot).  This one also seemed to hang for a second in a wind that must've gone from 0 MPH to 3 MPH while the shot was in the air.  Weird.  We even had out taller goalkeeper in net, but, same result as the Niagara game.  

So the TL; DR is that it was 0-0 for the remaining 85 minutes.  But, one interesting thing to immediately note is that once that goal was scored, I heard someone from the Wolfpack sideline exclaim "there's one!", perhaps in reference to the prediction I'd made here...or perhaps that person was referencing the fact that they scored 7 the prior week and was primed for a repeat performance, especially given how early into the game this goal had occurred (and they'd been pressuring consistently until that point, too).  Whatever the specific intent, I was probably the Polonia player closest to their bench when that was said (I'm not sure how many other people heard it), and I attempted to use that as motivation the rest of the way.

I can't say I personally succeeded; I was not in top form for this game, and therefore their speedy forwards beat me individually several times, especially in one rough patch in the second half where always-fast Weaver got by me a few times.  But, especially given our lineup limitations, we fought hard the rest of the way.  Possession in the attacking third was nearly nonexistent, but we built pretty well out of the back, and the three true midfielders we did have (Adam, Mo, Dan) did a good job building through the middle third.  Credit Wolfpack (as well as some unforced errors) for consistently denying our attacks before they became too dangerous.  

The second half saw Wolfpack come verrry close to adding a second or a third; there was one play where Weaver turned the corner on Derek right on the endline; Derek thought the ball had gone out of play, leading him to ease up, so Weaver was then able to dribble to the corner of the six and unleash a shot at point-blank range, on which GK Nick Nenno made a great kick save.  The goalkeeper controversy may be in full bloom for Polonia...but that's 'cause we have the equivalent of an in-form Kirk Cousins and an in-form RG3.  Not Flutie-Johnson or Gabbert-Henne or something.  

I'd like to be able to say we poured it on in the last few minutes to try to tie it up, but that didn't really happen, as we were too busy defending and perhaps (speaking for myself here, anyway) unaware that the game was in its closing moments.  Derek got injured with about 10 minutes left on a collision with the Wolfpack keeper, and that also served as a distraction, as it was bad enough to cause him to have to leave the game (the keeper was down for a bit, too--not sure how he ultimately fared, there).  

Final whistle blew and the better team on May 22nd were declared the victors.  Good game and good  luck to Wolfpack.

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Fair assessment. Polonia had a lot of pressure in that last 10 minutes. Didn't pour it on, but had is on our heals. Tough physical game as always against polonia. Good luck to you guys going forward.