Rug Burned

I guess it could have been worse. My previously undefeated Tuesday night co-ed team was without a goalkeeper last night on the turf field at Montrose, so I took it upon myself to fill in. It just seemed like the most logical option.

I mean, really, I own gloves. I must be qualified, right?

For the most part, I felt really sluggish and apprehensive coming off my line, even if it was just to scoop up heavy passes into space. The fact that we've got a sweeper who can catch up to almost anything helps. Then the other team had a shot glance off of said sweeper in the first half, catching me wrong-footed and sailing over my head into the back of the net.

We got one back early in the second half, and then that "almost" in the previous paragraph startrf to loom large. I don't know if we were pushing for the winning goal too much, or just fatigued, but suddenly I was facing a barrage of counterattacks as the game drew to a close.

I'm sticking to the story that I was getting much more aggressive coming off my line, forcing shots that were just wide enough to catch two posts and a crossbar, but with about a minute to go, one of those shots fell right back in front of the net. I've noticed this primarily in indoor soccer, watching the Storm last year, but a lot of soccer players don't "rebound" well when they're defending. We were no exception, they pounced, we lost.

To be fair, I don't know what I might have been able to done differently, or if yielding the place between the pipes to someone else would have done any better. That doesn't make it suck any less, but this has been a "grand scheme of things" kind of week, and I'm feeling guilty about getting down over a friggin' soccer game in that context, so I'm going to try to not dwell on it.