roos fc 4, QUEENSTON FC 2

Roos are still inferior to Queenston so they get the lower case treatment in the subject line.  I can give you many reasons why we lost to these dudes on Sunday, so I will.

1. We had nothing to play for
2. They had everything to play for
3. This isn't the same Roos team from May 1 to mid-June
4. We aren't the same Queenston team from May 1 to July 17
5. We wore our warmup gray shirts as our actual uniform.  This is about all the care we put towards that game on Sunday.
6. Roos cheated.

In a weird, twisted way, I'm ok with this loss because I'd prefer if the rivalry stay afloat for years to come.  And Roos still need to beat BUSS in the coming week in order to stay afloat.  But here's the problem:  If they do that, they jump us in the final table by a point, which is exactly what we did to them last season.  If they don't, they get relegated, and I would have preferred if we relegated them rather than BUSS.  So it's all a mess.  Anyway, to the game.

I show up and I see a lot of Roos warming up.  I also see 2 Rogue players and a BUSS player warming up and I got really confused.  But then I remembered, this is no longer Roos JV, and I immediately knew this game would be more competitive than anticipated.  No matter the year, we always seem to see Zack Thomas on the other side of the pitch at least twice.  But he doesn't take the cake when it comes to seeing a player far too often - that distinction belongs to Richie Gordon.  Seen him twice now on BDSL Sundays, but indoors I swear he was our opponent every other week at Sportsplex by way of "Tekkers".  Justin Sims must have messed up the scheduling, because we'd show up and wouldn't you know it, it was that darn Tekkers team again.  

I got side tracked:  So then I look at our team warming up.  Sike! All 4 of them are sitting down on the bench.  Now, I understand we went from a surprising potential TWENTY players show up for the season finale down to about 16 to my knowledge before arrival, and even at that number I thought we'd be good enough to see out a victory in about two hours, but then we started losing some key pieces that made me realize we'd have to play A LOT of guys out of position.  Greg Hoffman is out last minute with a bad back and Justin Sims' tire apparently blew out on one of the Canadian thruways forcing him to stay the night in our neighboring country.  So we're down to 14 at best.  No starting LB George Todino, no starting CAM Troy Brady, no Dumond/Kastner/Donner/previously mentioned Sims up top.  Just a complete mess.  At time of kickoff, no sign of Ross Suitor or Dylan Duncan (our other starting CB opposite of Hoffman) yet, so we're playing an outside mid at outside back, an outside back and an outside mid at center back, and another outside mid at striker (yours truly).  Riiiight.

Game gets underway and Suitor is on the bench now.  Almost as if he dropped in from a spaceship because no one saw him walking towards our bench.  So that's good.  He's like having 3 guys on the field at once.  He's involved in a defensive stop, then he also ends up being the guy who collects a pass in midfield, and he'll likely be involved with the goal or assist on offense.  I'm going to watch him more closely next year, as he may or may not actually be passing it to himself all the way up the pitch and all our statistics this year are wrong.  

With our makeshift shape, we're doing well enough to tread water through the first 10' I suppose.  Lots of balls being kicked back and forth from both sides lacking any creativity towards net.  Then after the first ten, a few dangerous spells start taking place where the Roos' outside mids and center mids are pinging some balls towards Alex Reid, and either from his foot or from a teammate's after his pass, they're starting to pepper the area at or around our net.  Dylan Duncan subs me off and we move some more pieces around; Max Braun moves up top with Joe Farrell, Dylan drops into his normal center back role linked up with Pat Eadie.  We finally have better shape.

But, that's when we ironically lost this game.  At roughly the 17' mark, a ball from Greco I believe gets played down the right hand side to Alex Reid, and Reid & Duncan go shoulder to shoulder for 10 yards or so, Dylan on the inside, but somehow Reid unleashes a quality shot out of Netter's reach into the side netting.  1-0 Roos.  It couldn't have been more than 2 minutes later, and this time it's Trevor Moreland playing a harmless, yet smart ball to space, where a CB should reside, but we had recently all pushed up in the attack, aside from Netter, which is important here.  So I'd think normally had he been up on the 18' or so, this is a simple clearance back up the pitch, but instead, Greco finds himself with tons of room on top of a ball in no man's land.  He carries the ball towards goal, and essentially waits for Netter to commit in one direction, and Greco finds the back of the net.  2-0 and as I look over to the 5 Roos on the bench, I can tell already that they think they've got this game in hand.  I look back over at the other 2 guys on our bench and based on their body language, we're completely ok with ending this season going out like a lamb.  It's kind of sad because at times we've shown some promise, this would not be one of those days.

Anyway, Queenston settles in a bit and towards the end of the half with maybe 6' to play, Ross Suitor does Suitor-like things and weaves through a bunch of players down the right hand side, gets into the box, makes Slabyk commit on a fake shot, and he slots a ball to Joe Farrell who streaked on towards net.  Farrell taps the ball in at 1mph and we're back in this game.  It's 2-1 but it felt like 4-1 at the moment to be honest.

I yelled out something cliche with about 3 minutes to go, something along the lines of "play hard, we cannot concede another before half".  We went on to concede another before half.  With 1' to play in the half, right back Matt Barth, who was strong throughout the game, was provided a pass from either Reid or Maloney, can't remember which, and he struck a clean ball side netting.  Devastating blow. We head to half down 3-1.

I kid you not, our team literally said nothing.  Just sat around, half tired, half hot from the mugginess, half fed up with our own play and how the season has been going over the past few weeks.  But as we all started to stand up, we discussed that despite how poorly we had played the first 45, we were finding some gaping holes in their defense, and figured we could bag a couple to level the score by game's end.  We head out to the pitch to re-start.

The first 20-25 minutes of this half probably saw Queenston on the front foot, finally.  We generated a bunch of corner kicks, some somewhat dangerous moments, and more of the ball in possession.  But we lacked any true good looks on net.  Probably against the run of play, it'd be Roos who would strike first this half, on a ball that ended up on Mike Skryp's feet.  He got into the box on the left hand side, created what appeared to be a really poor angle for himself near post, and struck a low ball towards our net.  Netter came out for it, went towards the ground, but I think the ball megged him into the side far netting.  4-1 Roos.  WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

Our 8 year run of non-losses to Roos was completely in jeopardy now, so I decided it was Raddy time.  Time to punish this defense for 4 goals and win this game 5-4, getting carried off the field by my teammates in the most meaningless 7th place table finish of all time.  So I told Farrell I'd play behind him as the second striker rather than side by side.  This seemed to create more chances for us up top.  I was fed a pass from Tony Galvano towards the wing, got by Maloney and raced towards the 18.  Played a diagonal back to Farrell who found Suitor who was ultimately stuffed by Weiss of the Roos.  Effing Weiss.  Curtis Dorian also had a nice swinging ball towards the top of the 18 that we ultimately muffed.  It took us maybe 75 minutes to realize that we shouldn't attack them directly down the middle, but rather go sides first and then find a man centrally...so frustrating.

Raddy time continues: 78th minute (or so) and Suitor plays me a nice ball up the gut about 30' out from net. I turn and see that basically their entire back line is playing as flat as possible.  Meanwhile, Farrell is also aware of this, as he's hugging the shoulder of one of the center backs.  I play a looping ball in over the defense that would require Farrell to do a little running on to in order to beat the keeper 1v1.  Slabyk reacts to this though rather quickly, so he challenges for the bouncing ball, but Farrell beats him to it, and rounds him on the left side.  One of the Roos defenders also reacted well to what was taking place, so he occupied the space on the near post giving Farrell no choice to shoot.  I continue my run to just outside the 6', Farrell finds me but the pass is one of the swirling variety.  I wouldn't call myself much of a true finisher, so the seasoned strikers probably one time these balls with ease, but with the time I had, I figured a quick trap and pass into the open net would be easier, plus, it'd save me some embarrassment if I miss over the net from 8' out.  I'd never play again. So I trap the ball, but it spills just slightly in front of me.  In the process of attempting to kick the ball into the open net, I'm taken out by either a defender or GK Slabyk in the process.  A cleat catches the top of my right big toe and I'm wiped out.  PK is rewarded.  I hear some Roos arguing over the call, which I think any team would do in this instance, but believe me, it was the right call.  I manage to get to my feet but there's no way I can even remotely take this penalty with my foot throbbing so Farrell steps up and buries it.  4-2 Roos. I sub off, ending my season. Raddy time is officially over, and the gatorade shower will have to wait until another defining moment in 2017.

With about 10' to go, there's clear handling of a ball in the Roos box by a Roos defender.  It should be an easy PK call, but we were just awarded one so I'm sure the head ref was a little gun shy.  Good time to mention the center official here.  Brutal.  When I pulled up to the field and saw it'd be him, I knew we'd have some questionable calls or no-calls all game.  He didn't affect the outcome as I believe Roos deserved all 3 on Sunday, but still, it's frustrating knowing in advance you have a guy who refuses to move into positions that would better his own calls.  He missed calls for/against us & Roos all game.  He's also the same official who everyone seems to take issue with.  Sometimes I like to trace other people's recaps and their frustrations with officials back to the score results on their team page on this website.  You can see the officials they had that day.  There's a common denominator here...

So anyway, the last 5' of the game saw little to nothing take place.  We had gassed out, and Roos were just missing on a 5th goal.  Final whistle blew, we shook hands and our season was over.  Roos get the notification that FC Yemen had won, meaning they weren't out of the woods just yet.  That surprised me to be honest.

Good luck to Roos in the next few days on their quest to stave off elimination.  This is not the 2008 Roos so personally I have no beef with the team or the players.  It was actually a pretty clean game.  If anyone is still reading this, kudos, as I intentionally tried to make it the longest one I've ever written, in terms of game recaps.  This sentence that I'm writing right now is only here to get the word count up.  And I think the word count is in fact increasing each time I tack on these extra sentences.

Just got off the phone with Paul Lamancusa. He's livid.

Marcin, we spied you taking in our second half haha.

Guilty. I'm somewhat conspicuous