Kickoff: 4:00pm Saturday, October 9th at Point Grey Turf
On Thanksgiving long weekend, an understaffed CAT side took the field against a young reserve team from Croatia SC. The game was played in torrential rain, and that combined with the general clumsiness of many of the Croatia players lead to some pretty woeful tackles, none of which were even cautioned by the Eastern European referee.
Early in the match Croatia missed an opportunity to jump out to a shock lead as a missed header in the Rino’s backline allowed them to play a ball across the box to a wide open left winger, who with the net gaping wide open duly smashed the ball off the outside of the post! This served as a wake up call to the Rino’s as they started attacking in waves. If it were not for the heroics of Croatia’s pint-sized, rotund goalkeeper, they would have surely been behind by halftime. Instead Rino’s strikeforce was left wondering just what it would take to find the back of the net.
The second half was dominated by Rino’s, as any time Croatia entered their half they were dispossessed by the likes of Stefan, Sam, and Ashkan. So comfortable were they in fact, that Sam was often seen pushing up the field ahead of the midfielders in search of the elusive goal. Far from a thing of
beauty, the goal finally came when 2nd half substitute Vinny Martin (who came directly from playing in the 2pm Div 1 game) sliced a cross in front of the net and it was poked home by another substitute, Gowan Gillis. Despite further pressure, including some free kicks in dangerous areas, Rino’s were unable to score again and settled for the 1-nil victory. The win evened their record after 5 games at 2-1-2.
Team: Henrique De Sousa, Khosrovi, Caulfield, Chow, Jinks(Nolan 80), Crompton(Ford 45), Shih(Freedman 70), Hill, Wilhelm(Martin 45), Nolan(Kaplan 45), Pritchard(Gillis 55)