Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Forsyth Fusion 96 Gold - TSC 96 Elite 2:2 (0:0); goals: Amit Yadav, Kareem Barbosa
On Saturday the first setback of the season struck much earlier than everybody had hoped. Our team had to fight with the pretty rough field condition and a determined but limited opponent in the opening phase of the game. When our boys started to settle into the match after about 10 minutes, the first opportunties popped up. Nicholas Wells had a couple of dangerous looking runs into the Forsyth penalty box after good through-balls from our midfield. He was either blocked in the last moment or the Forsyth keeper saved. In one of those scenes Nicholas had a credible claim for a penalty after he was tackled from behind inside the box - but the call was not made by the inexperienced young referee.
After Amit Yadav and Tony Griffin missed two other good chanches by just a few inches, the game went without goals into halftime. For TSC that was a disappointing result as there were enough chances for a two or three goals halftime lead whereas Forsyth basically created nothing to worry about.
After halftime our team struggled firs,t like at the beginning of the game to win control in midfield. It took a short period until they found their structure back and started to threaten the Forsyth goal again.In the 49. minute Amit Yadav raced to the long end of a nice diagonal chip by Devon Patterson into the Forsyth penalty box. Amit kept his nerves and put the ball past the keeper into the net. This goal was long overdue and highly derserved. Everything looked like TSC were on course now to bring the win home. Even more so as Nicholas Wells received a slicing pass through the Forsyth defense from Erik Mauer and was ready to score from five yards when he was brought down from behind. This time the referee awarded a penalty. Kareem Barbosa executed cool from the spot and extended the lead to 2:0 in the 57. minute.
What looked like a sure win for our team turned into another frustrating experience in the dying minutes of the game.
A sloppy pass in midfield resulted in an avoidable corner kick for Forsyth, 6 minutes before time. The corner kick found one of the Fusion players blatantly unmarked right in front of the goalbox. He did not let this unexpected chance slip by and headed in for the 1:2. In the remaining 5 minutes that goal showed effect on our players who became increasingly jittery and the game became rougher. Forsyth did not really produce anything dangerous from field play but the missing experience of some of our players showed when 2 unnecessary fouls in the mid of our half were comitted. Forsyth lobbed the resulting freekicks high into our penalty box. The second one brought them the equalizer in the last minute of the game. This outcome was highly disappointing for TSC as our team had so many played out chances where Fusion had basically nothing except those set pieces in the last minutes.
THUNDER 96
Elite
Mar, 20. 2010