Nigel McNie

The Old Ladies from Picton gained yet another award today, after we won our final 5 - 3. Great work by our team. Special mention to Andy, who only played about two games for us, but at least played the one that mattered most!

** ___ BEGIN GAME ANALYSIS, SKIP IF YOU DON'T CARE___ **

The game was ours by half time, as it happens. Although they scored first, after I was mugged in a tackle the ref later admitted was illegal, from there it was one way traffic until the end of the half. I got the equaliser, then PJ played his ninja game to keep them well on the back foot. I think Donovan might have scored somewhere in there too.

After the half, they were more competitive while our defense was worse, but time was always against them.

I played another game afterwards, filling in for some team in a completely different grade. It was a good, high standard game. We conceded a breakaway goal, but other than that our marking was good and we were making a lot of the play. Still, their goal keeper was proving a very hard task to beat. At the break, I told the guys to be more composed in front of goal and wait for the easy option, and finally we got our chance early in the second half. A couple of quick passes and I scored just under the bar. The game was more open after that, but neither team was able to force a decider, bringing us down to golden penalties to decide the game.

They went first and scored, then we scored right back. Then they again slotted theirs, and I was picked to go and take the next one. I seem to have a good thing going with penalties in shorter forms of soccer, and that run continued. Strange then, that I can't score a penalty in full soccer even if the goalie decides to have a nap while I do! Their next guy blasted his shot high and wide, leaving our guy to slot the ball between the goalie's legs to take the victory.

So all in all, a good finish to my competitive soccer playing for the year. I did play as goal keeper in two games after that, but I'm a useless keeper so I'm not counting that. We'll probably use the bartab we got for Syn bar last year to celebrate tomorrow night.

** ___ END GAME ANALYSIS ___ **

The end result of all of this is that I'm now very stiff and tired. Five nights a week of soccer is too much, I have decided [1]. The holidays are a chance to let my feet recover and become unfit again, before games resume some time in January.

[1]	Well to be fair, everyone was telling me this already. But I just had to do it to see. Turns out they were right.

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I went to watch the LA Galaxy vs. the Phoenix last night. Gamewise it wasn't that interesting, other than validating my opinions about the Phoenix and watching Beckham play.

Beckham was obviously just coasting around, but routinely hit through/switch balls with pinpoint accuracy. It's obvious that the Galaxy have been well drilled into what to expect from him too. He never really beat a man and never did anything flashy, but still had a direct hand in setting up at least one of the goals, even though he was half way down field.

As for the rest of the Galaxy, I didn't really assess them too much apart from their keeper, whom I don't rate.

The Phoenix, it seems, play very much like my Naenae team. When they apply themselves, they go through these purple patches where they zoom down the line in double quick time with good short passing and movement, and can cause problems around an opposition goal mouth. But I've still yet to see one of our attackers skip round or turn a defender and make a goal look easy, and they also couldn't hit a barn door if it was falling on them. Perhaps it's a lack of composure around goal, but it's a problem they need to address. Naenae solved this problem somewhat with an English import. Maybe the Phoenix need to find someone with more class up front? [1]

And the Phoenix defense... well let's just say they've probably cost about six championship points between them. They have to sharpen up, work doubly hard on their defensive pattern, and having that classy striker so they could get some tackling practise against some proper opposition wouldn't go astray too.

Of course, it's early days yet for the team. I'm not advocating a change in coach or team (barring the extra man up front). On the contrary, I reckon they should have at least three seasons to have a real go at showing us all what they can do. As mentioned before, they do show great promise at times - let's hope they'll deliver in future.

[1]	Not that I'd advocate an import, and thus a denial of any possible NZ talent, so soon in the club's history.

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All in all, it's been quite an embarrassing day today.

First, Martyn conceeded what was possibly the stupidest goal ever in twilight - only surpassed by PJ but I'll come to that in a bit. Basically, the opposition did what I did yesterday - pass off and shot - it went straight to Martyn, who stuck his foot out and it bounced off it into the back of the net. Wasn't even a hard shot, and we were 0 - 1 down after about five seconds.

Then we failed to score about a thousand times while they scored a cheap free kick goal. At half time the score was 3 - 2 to us. The other team had no manner of marking scheme going so this was quite annoying.

After the half, we conceeded two goals - well, PJ conceeded them really, as he was goalie and was caught up having a shot at the opposition goal (that's right - he was in the opposition goalie's circle when he was supposed to be in goal for us), the opposition nicked it and scored from half way. The second one was put over his head while he was on half way, he madly chased it back but in vain - he ended up pretty much upside down in the net and they'd scored yet again. One of the silliest goals I've ever seen. At least by that point we'd put a few more away, and in a way we were lucky we only won 8 - 4.

And after all that, I still managed to top that all, by dropping my bike on the gravel driveway for the park, breaking the left indicator and scratching the fairing that the bike shop recently repainted for free after they had damaged it! Unbelievable, I tell you. I was obviously meant to pay for that fairing and indicator.

So overall, as I said - embarrassing day. At least my cold seems to have gone :)

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