MRL Game #5 vs New United (WI)

Busy week so far with 93 ODP on Monday, State Cup Game #1 vs EP on Tuesday, 93 ODP on Wednesday (because of which we canceled scheduled training), State Cup Game #2 vs Eagan on Thursday, travel to Madison on Friday, and two games today (Saturday) for MRL.  Oh, then we travel back late tonight, play our State Cup Game #2 vs NSSA tomorrow to decide our group, and play our rescheduled MRL Game #7 vs Wayzata (MN) on Monday. 

Our game this morning vs New United (WI) was likely to be our toughest game of the day.  It was brisk outside, with the strong hint of coming rain, but the game started under decent conditions.  

 During our warm-up, we saw the field was bumpy and would make for some sloppy play in the midfield by both teams.

We started out in a 4-4-2.  New United has some skillful dribblers of the ball and some very athletic girls.  We pressed early winning some corner kicks that we failed to capitalize on, but New United settled in quickly and found their rhythm.  We could not get our central midfielders in good defensive positions as we struggled to adjust to New United attack.  New United managed to hit a couple long range shots on goal that Tori had to concentrate on due to the wet turf and bumpy field, but nothing really tested her.  

Midway through the half, trying to get control of the midfield, we pushed a central defender up a bit into a 3-5-2 formation that had served us well in our last two State Cup games back in Minnesota.  We've played enough different systems of play for the girls to understand them, but it's still tough to transition in the middle of the run of play.  

The half ended 0-0.

Bad field conditions, slight rain now and cold weather, both skill-negating factors that worked against us.  The girls were in a battle and we needed to dig deep, be strong on tackles, fight for loose balls, press as a group, and basically gut the rest of the game out if we wanted to leave with a W.  

We altered the shape of our central 3 mids in our 3-5-2 to two holding mids and one attacking mid (as opposed to one holding mid and two attacking mids).  That, along with the girls' fight and heart, saw us completely dominate the second half.  And I mean completely. 

The girls fought the field, the cold, the early-in-the-second-half-10-minute-rain-and-wind, and New United found it tough going to clear the ball from their half of the field for a great majority of the second half. 

We must have had close to 10 corner kicks in the second half, most of which (except one kicked out of bounds) caused some real panic for the New United defenders. 

We finally got on the board 15 minutes from time as Bidi (RM) served in a far post corner that Macky (LF) headed back across the goal for Becs (CD) to kick home. 

5 minutes later we put the game away, again from a corner kick, with Getch (Att Mid) finishing from a scrum in the goal mouth. 

Tough game, good result, great battle from the girls.

Back to the hotel to de-thaw and eat, then back out for a 3:30PM game vs Chicago Fire Jrs (IL).