Above: Man of the match, Paul Touchet prepares to score one of his two goals.

Monarcos Hold Out For a Half

29 August 2006

David Ahlgren

In a battle of the yellow jerseys, the Firecrackers were triumphant again.

It was a long time since the Firecrackers played on the large Watson Park, in fact, the last time a game was played there, a beloved member of the Firecrackers family was lost—the Nike ball.

The game started out very slow, as it often does when a dominant team plays one of the weaker teams.  The Firecrackers struggled through the first half, trying to string passes together, trying to play diagonal passes, but the Monarchas held their ground.  The firecrackers had a couple good chances when Chad Salstrom played a nice through ball to Dave Ahlgren.  Ahlgren had a poor first touch and the ball went harmlessly out of bounds.  Sean Stonehouse also had a breakaway, but had his clock cleaned from behind, by the last defender, I might add, just outside the box.  A yellow card was issued, and the entailing free kick was headed just wide of the side post.

Later that half, defender Garret Ruiz was elbowed in the back as he shielded the ball from an attacker.  Words were traded, and the Monarchas player came out looking like a boxing kangaroo with his fists in the air.  Somehow Ruiz was awarded a yellow card and had to ride the pine for a while.  If only we could speak Spanish to the ref’s we would get away with a lot more than we do.  Unfortunately, English tends to make ref’s mad.

Jeremy Basanese learned this in the second half when he told the ref how he felt about a call.  The ref replied, “Your opinion doesn’t matter to me,” to which Jeremy replied, “YOUR opinion doesn’t matter to me!”  Apparently Jeremy’s opinion DID matter to the ref, who then pulled out a yellow card.

It was a weird game yesterday, with the way the ref’s handled things.  Players were getting creamed all over the field, but they only called it when they felt like it.  There was even a time when the Monarchas were substituting during live game play, right in front of Ken.  To his credit though, Ken did one thing that I thought was handled perfectly, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Firecrackers started the scoring when Sean Stonehouse recorded his first assist of the season.  The ball was played into him about 30 yards out, and he took one touch to set himself up, and then played a brilliant ball right through the defense to Dave Ahlgren.  Ahlgren set himself up well with his first touch and used the outside of his foot to put the ball right past a frozen Monarchas goalie.

About 10 minutes later, Ahlgren was played another through ball.  Two Monarchas defenders closed on him from either side, with a little bit of a head start.  Not wanting to be taken out, he lowered his shoulder and slowed down a little.  This caused the two defenders to blindly run into each other a little off balance, and then take a tumble.  Yellow card Dave.

Now is when it gets interesting!  Paul Touchet hopped up off the bench and not ten seconds later, Jeremy Basanese intercepted a pass from the Monarchas defense.  Playing a very smart ball through, he pinned Paul and Paul put the ball away like an old pro! 2-0 Firecrackers.

About 8 minutes later, Chad Salstrom received the ball in the middle of the field, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Paul Touchet making a break toward the goal.  He played it to him and as the goalie came out, Paul hit what looked to be an impossible angle shot from the right of the goal box.  Impossible it was not, because all of a sudden the Firecrackers were up 3-0!

The defense held again, and the game ended with a clean sheet.  New player Alex Bianchi played well in his debut, and the defense turned in a solid performance, for their third clean-sheet of this season!!  In 5 games, only 3 goals have been scored against us.  Phenomenal job!

The second half was a much better result.  Next game we will have John and Justin Basanese back as well.  Let’s keep having a great turnout, because great turnouts equal great results!

Photos from the game can be found here.

Second Batch of Photos here.

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