Another nice game, with a good result

Victor's soccer team played their second-last regular season game last night, in what can best be described as an "Irish drizzle". I was late getting out of work, so Victor had to meet me on the front porch, with the equipment bag ready, and even so we only made it to the field a minute or two before the kick-off.

Our opponents were the team with whom we've been sharing a practice field all season long. They had a very low turn-out of players and only fielded seven to start the game (the minimum number for the game to be played). We put eight players out at first, then pulled Ryan off the field after counting our opponents. As players for the other team started to show up during the first half, we put more on from our substitution roster.

We went up by a goal inside a minute of play, and the vast majority of the action during the first half was inside the opposing team's 18-yard box. Not only did we have an advantage in numbers, but also in size: it seemed that all of our bigger players were out to face all our opponent's smallest players. Several passers-by asked if we were playing a team in our own age-group (the clear implication being that we were "picking on" a younger team).

After twenty minutes, we were sitting on a four-goal lead, and Tom (our goalkeeper) was loudly complaining that he was bored . . . there had only been two attacks and only one got far enough to kick at goal.

At one point, Victor took the ball just past the half, dribbled down the right side, beating three defenders in sequence, then made a sharp left turn, pushed the ball directly across the goal-mouth and chipped-in a lovely left-footed goal. It threaded the needle between two opponents and passed just out of reach of the keeper. It was one of the finest goals I've seen all season long (it was also his first non-penalty goal).

Victor added two more goals during the game to claim his first hat trick, and both of them required him to create his own scoring opportunity by working down the side-line and protecting the ball. He had a very good game indeed!

Victor's three goals were surpassed by Jake's four, and the final score was 12-1 (the one goal being scored by the older brother of one of the players wearing a borrowed team jersey, and technically shouldn't have counted).