OT4 Shuts Down Internationals D

If the length of a report is determined by the quality of the game, then this, of the first home game of the season, will be a very short one. We played like crap, missed a ton of chances, and even then we did not need a goalie. The large and highly vocal, because that is all the exercise he had, Larry never touched the ball when it was in play. There was no shot on goal by Internationals players. Our defence tried and missed.

That we won only by four goals to nil was all due to the grand plan of obfuscation offered by the attack. This will prevent our future opponents from realising our great determination not to score before apoplexy upsets the person between the goal posts. Initial offerings were dire, with the Royals unable to string passes together, and our opponents, outmatched but determined to have fun, doing no better.

After 20 minutes, a breakthrough, as Marwan Kassis put us up. More chances abounded, all were spurned. A few of the non-goals were due to great saves by the keeper who later informed us he was only playing his second game as a goalie. This news came as a shock to Coach VanDyk, who had a sure goal stopped by a great reflex save. Harry also put one off the crossbar, and Cathcart, Kassis, Blackwell, Slemko and Green all should have scored. 1-0 at the half, and we were shaking our heads wondering why.

The second half brought the slightest of improvements, as the Gitte began losing patience, ignoring Jeff's physical threats, to move upfield and try to spur us on. Graham put us ahead by two on the hour, catching the keeper off his line (ed. does he ever score any other way?). More prompting by Parker, Steele, uncharacteristically without his Whitetops, and VanDyk, finally resulted in a merited goal for Harry, this with 15 minutes left. Almost immediately after, Matthew Blackwell broke his duck and slid home the fourth, after a nice helper from Arnone.

There is, though, a genuine sense of democracy in our team, because at the end of play no fewer than seven of us have scored in two games. With eight goals that means that one of our number is two. Which means that Harcombe has some work to do: a) turn up; b) score goals. That's if he wants to maintain his promise to be top goal scorer this season. It might be argued that the defense did a great job in keeping Larry out of the game, but it wasn't that they were terribly hard pressed. Honey Fournier was solid, as was Fergus Macdonald. Further forward, Green and Brun Del Re had rather off games, but dirty debutant Brian Mackintosh added some spark to the attack.

Now, the OCSL has put up the OT listings and we are third. Chelsea and the Spitfires are on top with many more goals than we have blasted (!) between the posts. This promises to be a hard fought campaign, with many more hard games than we at first had expected. We really need to stop wasting chances, and to stop playing games like this. We all promise we'll do better, Cathi. Maybe when Richard shows up next week, we will do better.

Not the usual charming, humorous report. But that's because the game scribes copped out from their responsibilities, having thoughts bent towards the Low Countries where some other teams will be playing for the rest of the month. By the way, where's Scotland in all this?

Report by Paul with fascist editorial work by Doug.