Soccer Game May 5th 2007

Dear Bro,

Yeah, I know.... May 5th was a week ago and why does it take that long to blog a simple soccer game? To be honest, it had been so long ago since last season that I had in fact forgotten that I was blogging these games for you. So with no further stalling or excuses: the soccer game blog.

This blog would have started four weeks ago for the first game of the season, but it was raining cats, dogs, hyenas, and hamsters so the game was washed out. The next game went off without a hitch, but I was too busy holding either Syd or Brenners to attend, while the week after that the Connecticut & Maryland trips left me too tired to put on the cleats and play.

But last weekend I pretty much ran out of excuses. So when Saturday afternoon rolled around I threw my cleats & shin guards in my kitbag, changed into my soccer jersey & shorts, and hopped in the car to tootle over to Mason to engage in a titanic struggle with a team called Second Wind. And no, they are not a bunch of transplanted Toyota employees bent on soccer-pitch glory, but rather my old team from five years ago that was called High & Wide, only now they have really fancy jerseys and play at a full size indoor pitch call "Wall to Wall".

When I arrived I had to run the gauntlet of my teammates with the usual questions (as it was the forth game of the season)
"Who are you again?" "Rich, is that you? Where you been?" "Rich, man... you look grayer!"

Once this "break-in" period was completed, I proceeded to run out onto the artificial turf and start kicking a ball back and forth with a teammate. For reference, full size indoor fields are not that much different then outdoor fields, only if the ball hits the roof it is a throw-in for the other team and there are not massive divots or depressions in the turf as our normal pitch has, so any mis-kicks or bad shots are purely the fault of the kicker, a definite disadvantage for a player like myself.

Before the game started I was doing a short run across the field to get my heart rate up, when someone kicked a ball past a teammate and it went sailing into the corner. So since I am already running I say "what the heck!" and decide to chase it down. In performing this task I made two discoveries:
1. There is only about 3 feet between the endline of the pitch and the cement wall.
and
2. When you are running at full speed it is not humanly possible to come to a complete stop in that three foot span.
Needless to say, it is five minutes to game time and I have proceeded to scrap up my elbow and bash the dickens out of my hip. I then had to head to the restrooms as the other team would not have been too happy about the blood dripping down my forearm, so a quick wash and direct pressure too care of that issue.
Now, the team we played were quite skilled and usually beat us, but that we do not mind. What we do mind is they have two or three male players that tend to play "through the ball", which translates to if you happen to be loitering between them and the ball that you will end up being elbowed or just out & out run over. This is irritating for our male players but we tend to just brush it off and keep playing. The problems occur when they do it to the female players, because, as you know, there is an unwritten rule that "thy male players will not inflict physical harm on thy opponent's female players".

Our opponents tend to be alright for the first 20 minutes, and this was the case in last week's game. The problem with the physical play started due to one small issue: we scored a goal. Matt had the ball around the half line when he found himself undefended. Thus, an open invitation to drive to the goal and score... so he did.

After that, the fireworks started. One of their players decided to leave his feet to head a ball at midfield and was up ended by one of our players that he jumped into. He took offense to this even though our player (Jay) was facing the other direction and didn't even see him coming. After some muttering he did the famous "shoulder-bump" where he walked by Jay and made sure he made contact with Jay with his shoulder. Real classy move....

So we as a team braced ourselves for another rough and tumble game with this team, when another event occurred in almost the same spot. This time the player in question came in quickly on a tackle (aka - playing through the ball) and ended up falling on the ground. In our league when you are on the ground you are not allowed to attempt to play the ball, but this guy decided the rules don't apply to him. What happened next was unclear, but he ended up kicking Matt, and then jumped up and started getting in his face, including the obligatory shoulder bump. Matt just stood his ground and said nothing, so this rocket scientist decided to take a swing at Matt. Fortunately, two events happened here. First, he missed... and second, the referee saw the whole thing. Subsequently, for the first time I can remember in 14 years playing in the over 30 social league, a player was ejected from a game.

We went on to win 4-0 and the tone calmed down from that point, but kudos to my team (especially Matt) for keeping their cool in a tense situation.