Thursday, October 22, 2009:

First of all, I must say Happy Birthday to my son Sean, as today is his 24th Birthday. I woke him up early this morning to tell him the same.

Now, last week, we had to cancel our game with Maryville College, as the field was unplayable and the rain was non-stop all day. We will not make that game up, as neither of us has a good date available.

About our game last evening against Huntingdon College from Montgomery, Alabama. They were an old rival from our NAIA days and we last played them in 1997. Needless to say, this old rival was ready for a renewal so to speak. I can not begin to express how poorly we played in this game. We had been off from last Thursday until Sunday night, fro Fall Break. It was quite obvious that we did not need that long of a break, as our play showed how truly bad we are at the moment. Let me begin by stating our first goal came late in the first half on a goal from Garner Shivers from a cross by Tyler Evans. The half ended with us up 1:0. At halftime, we addressed our many deficiencies during the half and implored each of them to clean up their passes and thought process. Well, I thought it worked, as we scored our second goal 5 minutes into the second half on a goal by Tyler Evans from a Garner Shivers cross. We now led 2:0 and I thought we have our rhythm back, only to be brought back to reality, that we did not have any rhythm at all. It was only in 2 instances in the game that we found it. To say we have no idea about the fine art of passing (which by the way is integral to the game of soccer), is a gross understatement. Not only can we not pass properly or to our own teammates, we can not even think when to make the pass. If we were relying on a paid attendance to watch a circus act, we would fill the stadium, as we look like trained seals, who only want to show how fancy we are and not how simple we can play to be effective. That is the problem with today's young players...they do not know how to play and think simply in the flow of the game. They just want to impress you with how many touches and fancy moves they can execute before releasing the ball. Last night was a microcosm of what is wrong with the game today in my opinion. Soccer is supposed be a simple game played with passion and thought in order to create a rhythm in the game that has balance thus creating the flow necessary to be effective. If we continue to not play simple we will become bit players in a small circus trying to attract fans to watch how fancy we can be. We must learn somehow to be simple and play 1 and 2 touch soccer with great movement off the ball. In all the goals we have given up (12 in 13 games), I would bet you that over 90% have come because we pass our opponents the ball in the defensive third of the field. Never does that happen for us by our opponents. This happens when we are under very little or no pressure and everyone else is now moving forward in the attack, when we make this horrible pass and we are now numbers down in the defense and can not recover quickly enough to stop the counter. last night, we had clear possession in our defensive to middle third of the field and moving into our attack, when we passed a ball directly to the opponent, who immediately countered and left a player one on one against our keeper. Our keeper came out to narrow the angle and then he shot and as the ball was going way wide of goal, one of our defenders rushing back, hit the ball with his hand and although it was surely wide of the goal, the referee called the hand ball and not only awarded the penalty kick (which was justified and correct), he issued a Red Card to our defender. This happened with about 9 minutes remaining in the game. They converted to make the score 2:1 and he held on with 10 men to get the win.

In summary, all I can say is what I told the team in the locker room after the game and that was, you cannot become a great team, unless you play simple soccer and learn how to not only pass the ball early and accurately, but also be able to think! We have a Conference game tomorrow evening (Friday) in Jackson, Mississippi, against Millsaps College on artificial turf. If we play the same kind of poor balls, we will not be very successful, if at all. I am greatly disappointed in how we have been playing lately against lesser opponents. We have always told all our teams, that our only opponent is ourselves. What I mean by that is, we play a certain way and if we execute and play our game at our level, it does not matter what our opponents do. They will have to play as good as us to get a tie and better than us to win. We must stop all this foolish passing and fancy playing in order to become what our potential tells us we can become. I hope we can learn from this game and apply it for the remainder of the season!

So, until tomorrow evening, I will say good bye and hopefully, everyone will have a great week-end.

With my best regards,
Coach G from Birmingham, Alabama