Game #5: 4-2 victory vs. Munchenbox

Comments from team manager David:

This was a great 4-2 win over 3rd place Munchenbox. We showed up with a full squad, minus SF Doug (and tardy Seamus). They showed up with only 1 sub.

They play a cherry picker, often 4 players back, with one superstar up front who did not play practically any defense.

we were up 2-0 and half, went up 3-0 pretty quickly before our typical "make it close" approach allowed them to catch up 3-2 with approx 12 min left. lots of time left at that point, and we were not looking good after their 2 quick goals.

but, even though they could have taken momentum at that point, they might have been out of gas, while we still had plenty of fresh legs waiting to sub and sprint. Also, it was kinda weird, but it seemed that at 3-2 we started controlling the play even more than before, except for 2 minutes.

it might have been at 3-2, i don't recall what the score was (maybe 4-2), but we got a card and played down for 2 min. killed the penalty, pretty easily as i recall (easy to say this from the bench of course), with all 3 defenders (PV, Chuao, Seamus) out there and Geoff up front.

short story (if not too late for that) is that we shut down their cherry picker and wore them out. I think we surrounded their cherry picker about 1/2 the time he got ball, which was a small percentage of the time they passed to him.

Chuao did an incredible job in the first half coming from behind him and intercepting the pass, and other times either shutting him down or poking the ball away.

In the first half of the first half, when Chuao did not intercept or immediately steal the ball, the cherry picker often took only 1 or 2 touch and then shot. Kevin blocked anything that was on-goal. Part of Kevin's first half shutout, besides plenty of on-goal shots from their cherry picker, was an awesome stop of a 1-on-1 right in front of the net. I know the other team deflated a bit at that moment.

(Btw, I know we all talked confidently after the game about shutting down their superstar cherry picker, but I maintain that he is indeed a superstar. Of all those quick shots he took, do you recall any going directly to Kevin’s belly or rolling weakly up to Kevin?)

In the second half, we often had midfielders coming back from offense and surprising the cherry picker. One of my favorite plays was Geoff doing exactly that early in the second half. Geoff hustled back on defense, took the ball from him, and we headed the other direction.

Great solid defense by PV, Chuao and Kevin, holding them scoreless until Seamus' alarm finally went off a second time (does anybody live near Seamus and can disable the snooze button on his alarm?). But, of course, another showing of solid defense from Seamus during the final 3/4 of the game. I think he went right in and took down their cherry picker on his first play. If the cherry picker was not already pissed ("angry" that is), I think Seamus taking him down got him into a falling down habit, which luckily was rarely called as fouls. That cherry picker must have hit the turf a dozen times.

One other point is that Munchenbox will surely show up for the playoffs (see below) with more subs. Also, for those who don't recall Munchenbox (previously known as Survey), their short "red socked" midfielder (their best player, before they picked up the cherry picker last session) was not there tonight.

Well, that's half the story. As for the offense, I'll let those who scored and assisted do the descriptions.