9am is clearly too early for the Rusty Plough. The players straggled in minutes before game time and looked as if they had slept in their cars. The yawning and moaning did not bode well for their match against second place Wanderers.
Furthermore, the Rusties lacked a keeper with first-choice keeper Forsyth out of town, second option Blair unavailable, and third choice Moriconi having been sent to Italy for re-education. Patty Fisher, nursing what we thought was a small groin pull (well, we know about the small groin), gallantly volunteered to take up goal tending duties.
Patty looked like a Greek statue as he stood in the net, the Sean John jacket a unique and distinct fashion choice for keeper attire. Unfortunately, not only did Patty look like a Greek statue, he moved like one. And, as we watch him flail at shots, we realized he mostly resembled Venus de Milo.
The tone for the game was set early when the Wanderers came down in a one on one against Hudson. They had one of those players that could move at his mid section and he kept leaning one way and then going another. Hudson, who appears to have no center of gravity whatsoever, was not the right person to defend such a shifty character, and he juked right past the defender and scored the opening goal.
Shortly thereafter, the Wanderers put a though ball past the Rusty Defense. Jaimie screamed at Patty to come get it, Patty continued to look statuesque. Hudson tried to catch the fast Wanderer, but that was not happening since Hudson had failed to warm up. 2-0.
Now the Wanderers realized that Patty was immobile. They saw an opportunity to shoot from distance, and Patty watched the ball into the net with a level of calmness and grace rarely displayed by a keeper.
Jamie then announced, I’m going in goal. Things got a bit better (it helped that Jose had finally shown up) and the Rusties played better for the remaining 30 minutes of the half. The Rusties almost clawed one back when Jose played a ball up to Jason who made a one-touch pass to Jeff. Jeff shocked everyone by attempting a cheeky finish with his left foot. He totally fooled the defender and the Wanderer goalie had to dive hard to his right and he barely managed to push it around the post.
There was also a nifty move that involved Peter dropping a back heel to an onrushing (Andy?), but the subsequent cross failed to find an attacking player.
The Wanderers poured four more in during the second half. Jamie, still playing goal, almost stopped a break away, but the ball bounced away from him after he made an amazing stop and the Wanderer striker picked up the pieces. Nik agreed to take on keeper duties for the final 20 minutes and let up one goal and got knocked to the turf for his troubles.
Furlong made a nifty move when the game found him, surprisingly, in the defensive half of the field. He did a world famous Furlong pull back, and the Wanderer player clattered his ankles after being fooled and surprised by the deceptively slow speed on Furlong’s silky touch. Costello held down the left side for quite some time and carefully avoided a foul in the box while aggressively defending. Lewis had a few chances to turn and shoot, but was unable to find the goal. Jason ran forward and back covering and attacking and generally being a pest, but, again the Rusties just couldn’t make anything happen.
Steve, Andy and Gerardo patrolled the mid-field and exhausted themselves trying to defend and attack the younger and quicker opposition. Steve also dropped back into defense to free-up Dale in the second half. Dale Webber deserves a special mention for covering the entire right side of the field, a portion of the center, the back line and the front line. He must have covered six miles in his 90 minutes. He also had a few chances in the second half and forced at least one solid save from the Wanderers’ keeper.
Despite the shellacking, the Rusties showed amazing esprit de corps, bonhomie, and overall good spirits. The game was positive and, as always, a fun time. Due to the early game time, Trumer Pils will be consumed later this evening.
The nice things about being shut-out two games in a row is I don’t have to figure out where the golden boot stands.
Golden Boot
- Welsh - 6
- Faucette - 2
- Hudson - 2
- Waranoff - 2
- Wekwerth - 2
- Costello - 1
- Delgadillo - 1
- Fisher - 1
- Viveros - 1
- Yeo - 1