Lady Rovers 1: State Cup Rd 2 11/15/09 - Sometimes soccer just plainly sucks...by Nicolas

Lady Rovers 1: 0 Vendaval 1
You know all these ready-made expressions people have about the beautiful game? How what makes it great is its unpredictability and the possibility for a game to change entirely in a few seconds? How the magic of the game is that just one goal out of the blue is enough to determine the outcome of a game? Well believe you me, these expressions are bs when you are faced with them because there is just nothing magic about seeing the better team loose.
- On Sunday Rovers 1 stumbled in its Cup run in the worse fashion: by entirely outplaying its opponent but being unable to score. To keep a long story short, Rovers 1 entirely dominated the first half and the second half, keeping possession of the ball most of the time and trying its luck time and again. Getting the ball in the net looked like a question of when and how often rather than if. The last 5 minutes of the first half and first 5 of the second half provided a perfect example. In the last five, a great corner ended up on Andi's head and bounced between the line and the upper post, looking like it went in just to be picked up in the air by the goalie. Then, on a great cross from the left, Emily cut in, jumped and open foot volleyed the ball in the small net… Move to the second half, a perfect run by Laura down the left and into the box, she passes it, the ball rolls parallel to the goal through 3 defenders, in front of the goalie and past two of our players without anybody being able to kick it in or out. Then on yet another cross, Liz takes a close range shot towards an open net and the ball flies right over it. Less than 2 minutes later, one of our players (I believe Laura or Amy) makes a run inside the box with the ball and is taken down from behind by the last defender as she was about to score, a clear penalty kick if we have ever seen one. The improvised referee (the official one never made it to the game), a ref registered in NJ (no offense to any NJsers out there) looks at it, thinks for a second or two and then motions with both arms indicating that we should keep on playing and there is no foul….
In the end, Vendaval had two shots on goal. The first, a free kick from about twenty yards out was poorly taken, flew way too high only to drop by chance right between Annie's extended hand and the bar for a completely underserved goal 20 minutes in the second half. The second, a great one on one attempt, the only time our defense was beaten the whole game, was countered by a fantastic dive from Annie.
2 chances on goal versus more than 15 and a final score of 1-0. Sometimes soccer just plainly sucks.