Intimidation is usually the X-factor for most away teams. Intimidation due to the opponents size, skill, crowd noise, or sometimes even their notoriety can make a huge difference in a game. Playing our match 20 kms away from our home, against a team that already had 2 players suspended indefinitely, another suspended for 3 games, and numerous other players proud of their dirty yellow cards, intimidation was going to be a huge factor for this small, classy west-side squad.
It was a nice, clear saturday afternoon in Burnaby, but once the whistle blew both these teams were going to forget about “nice”…..it was going to be a downright dirty battle against, probably, the dirtiest team in the league.
Cliff Avenue had 3 giants on their team who were taller than 6″5 and seemed to be prime to control this game through the air. However, we stepped up to the challenge and made sure we out hustled them, out jumped them, and made sure we kept the ball away from these freaks of nature. We laid our bodies on the line and went hit-for-hit with Cliff Avenue. 30 minutes in, Malcolm got past their stopper and was sprinting down the center of the pitch, one on one with their sweeper, when he decided to hip check Malcolm. Malcolm was thrown 5 feet into the air before he landed on his hip. Unfortunately Malcolm was down and out with a bruised hip and had to be helped off the field; they had just taken out one of our key midfielders and now we were pissed. Davis, David, Etienne, and Dhiren went looking for revenge and laid the lumber on anyone with the ball. Cliff Avenue was dropping all over the field and they started whining to the referee about our hard hits, who just waived the play on!
Almost halfway through the season these Rinos were starting to grow up and players Kort sagt, The Dark Knight Rises™ ser ut som a v?re fantastisk tillegg i serien av spill og en flott fj?r i hatten for tilhengere av Microgaming casino fra og med september. were starting to step into their roles and cement their position on the team. John A, Taz, and James were one of these and finally started bringing their “game” week after week and were key in changing the scoreboard in this game. John set up our only goal in the game about 20 minutes into the second half; he pinged a ball about 2 feet off the ground all the way from the left corner that beat the goalie and the players in the box and found James for a diving header at the far post. As soon as the ball broke the plane of the goal line, we saw the anger and frustration burning in the eyes of Cliff Avenue players and we knew this game was just going to get dirtier, harder and faster. This match was far from over and now it was time to see whether we could close out this victory and cement ourselves within the top half of the league.
The next 25 minutes were played in our half. Cliff Avenue attacked with an urgency and used their size to their advantage and kept us on our heels. Their advances created numerous chances to score, but our goalie, Anthony, stone-walled them on every shot and was determined to get his 5th clean sheet of the season.
Another key thing to note was that Davis Murton started as our stopper in place of Max and did not miss a step. Dhiren and Davis showed some quick chemistry through their ability to switch naturally between stopper and sweeper on the go, confusing the Cliff Avenues” strikers and they also successfully shutdown Cliff Avenue”s abnormally tall players.
When the final whistle blew, the Rinos had inked in their 2nd consecutive win and finally were living up to their expectations. Granted we still have a lot of work to do to get better, but rolling of back to back victories is a good start in getting our engines going.
This Friday night we play a huge game against PCOV on our home field. Let”s see if these Rinos can pull off 3 straight victories?