Div 3 [VMSL DIV 3] Results, Gossip, Predictions 2015/2016

[RickG]

First Div. 3 results starting to trickle in. Off to their usual slow start, Boners dropped three points to Lobbans yesterday.

Due to a scheduling mix up our home field was booked for a pointy football tournament--wild...cheerleaders, tailgate parties, etc.--the North Van version of Friday Night (or, rather, Saturday Afternoon) Lights. This led to a mad scramble for an alternate pitch and a lot of standing around by both teams. By a complete fluke, Windsor turf was free at 2 due to a cancellation and we all sped over there, along with the ref, to try to get the game in.

Lobbans have a young, well-coached team, like last year, and they have improved since then. I think they'll drop points to bigger, stronger, teams, like West Coast Saints, and they didn't really create much against a mediocre Boners side yesterday, except for one moment of brilliance in the final two minutes with a great turn and shot from back to goal, from about 20 meters out, curling to the right just inside the far post.

All in all the Surrey lads deserved the win. We have several new players and our side will be pretty inconsistent early on. But, hey, who can complain? This season is ON!

 

[trece verde]

Burnaby Selects 4 Royal Dutch 1

Not pretty to watch but we had to do something while frantically hunting down callups for our own game.

An ugly own-goal each way accounted for the highlights (or lowlights). The Royal Dutch keeper (at least he looked like a keeper) got chipped from about 45 out off the wing and tipped the ball backwards into his own net. The Burnaby Selects keeper in his grey hoodie got beat by his own defender (the Modric look-alike) who managed to hit the ball off both of his knees at the same time while falling over backward. Both of these teams are going to struggle almost as badly as us.

Celtic 1 B's 0

Not very pretty either as we had to field a lineup of 10 with only 3 players under 30 (and two over 50). Thankfully they only had 7, including the ageless Max McRae.

Too many guys from the Celtic roster unavailable due to work, so we had callups from the Spurs and Thunder. Many, many squandered chances, including at least 3 diving headers by our centre back who thinks he's a forward, 2 off the post by Catorce, and a number of others that should have been converted.

Back to pulling my hair out dealing with getting grads from our youth teams to actually commit to playing again...

 

[Soccer Coach]

Campo Libre 1-1 West Van Royals.
You have to give credit to those guys. They had only 9 players, and we had 17. The entire game was one way traffic. Our players had about one shot per minute, but only one ball went into the net. Then, we made an error of overconfidence. We thought that eventually on the second half at least a couple of more goals will occur as they were tired and we had plenty of subs. It did not happen. On the rare opportunity that our keeper touched the ball, he dropped it from his hands into the forwards feet. An scramble, and a penalty. No one complained. They converted with class, and defended with everyone on the box for the last few minutes. It felt like a loss, but this is the way the game goes. Good for them and for not giving up.

 

[Soccer Coach]

These are the CAMPO Power rankings for our section:
1) Benfica 1063
2) Burnaby Metro 1050
3) WC Celts 1038
4) Ante United 1038
5) Campo Libre 1000
6) WV Royals 1000
7) Norwest 963
8) Arya FC 963
9) Bosna 950
10) Royals 938

 

[RickG]

Boners 1, Siaron 0. Ugly game, chirpy opponents and, frankly, our guys are playing like shite at the moment. Scheduling conflicts with guys coaching youth soccer meant we only had 10 players and one of those guys had such a bad groin pull he could barely move. Ref was pretty much as bad as the VMSL can offer and guys on both teams were carping about calls all game. Lots of yellows and then one of our guys lips off, gets a yellow, refuses to shut up and gets sent off. The guys pretty much just hung on after that and were lucky to get the points.

The match ended with a couple of guys on each team lipping each other off and plenty of macho posturing. Complete bullshit in my view and I wonder how it is that some guys just never seem to grow up. Lots of better ways to spend a Sunday morning. We are going to have to get a lot better if we want to compete for one of the top 3 or 4 spots in our group this season.

 

[RickG]

I think this pretty much sums up our season so far. English sunday soccer and VMSL Div. 3. Living in a parallel universe.

 

[Soccer Coach]

A bit too early, but interestings results. The collapse of VAFC Celtic 11-0 meant that they went to the bottom. I actually threw a few extra points and had to fudge the equation assuming that an emergency occurred on the team and to support Trece and the club. West Coast Celts and Lobbas are already favourites to get their groups.


49 DIV 3C 630 West Coast Celts
50 DIV 3A 626 Lobbans
51 DIV 3A 624 SU Extreme A
52 DIV 3C 611 Bby Metro Athletic
53 DIV 3B 583 FC Serbia
54 DIV 3A 580 West Coast Saints
55 DIV 3B 575 Cliff Sr Cobras
56 DIV 3B 562 Unicorns FC
57 DIV 3B 560 Burnaby Selects Utd
58 DIV 3C 520 PCOV Benfica
59 DIV 3C 518 West Van Royals
60 DIV 3B 515 Royal Dutch Cousins
61 DIV 3C 510 Campo Libre
62 DIV 3A 490 Royal City YSC A
63 DIV 3A 480 PCOV Europa
64 DIV 3C 477 Bosna SC
65 DIV 3A 475 Bowen Island FC
66 DIV 3A 475 Pacific FC
67 DIV 3A 463 Siaron
68 DIV 3C 448 Ante Up United
69 DIV 3C 433 Royal United FC
70 DIV 3B 432 B United
71 DIV 3C 422 NorWest United
72 DIV 3B 412 Strathcona United
73 DIV 3C 408 Arya FC A
74 DIV 3B 408 Ex Patriots
75 DIV 3B 403 N Coq Utd. FC Outsiders
76 DIV 3A 401 South Delta Rangers
77 DIV 3B 380 VAFC Celtic
78 DIV 3A 370 Green Devils A

 

[trece verde]

Um... thanks, I think.

Too many players had to be borrowed from the over 40 team against Cobra who looked to have an average of about 22. No goalkeeper available from any of 3 teams means a predictable result, although No Hands was reasonably credible in the number of breakaways turned back. He will need some aloe vera to take care of the red light burn on the back of his neck, though. End result was not so much of a collapse as much as a slow motion fall-over. Currently sending out milk cartons with pictures of the 3/4 of our players who were missing on Saturday...

 

[RickG]

Boners 3, PCOV Europa 0, yesterday, in a better effort than recent outings. Boners had 3 subs, which must be some kind of team record.
It was a spirited effort from PCOV who have some good players, but some of their older guys started to tire in the second half and the young island lads were able to find a lot of space in the midfield late in the game.
Thought the score flattered us a bit, this was more like a 1 or 2 zip game.

 

[trece verde]

Nice to meet RickG last Saturday.

Still had to borrow old farts to supplement the lineup vs. Strathcona on Sunday but what more of a headshake was seeing a former key player in their lineup. Wonder if he's going to be scarce when skiing season starts like he did with us?

 

[RickG]

Great to finally put a face to the name Trece!

Boners 9, Pacific FC 0 this week.

These guys are a new team, and I think they have some ambition, but they are still in the early building phase. Sadly, the quality of play in the VMSL, even in Div. 3 (and especially now that there are three Div. 3 groups) makes it really tough on new teams that are starting from scratch. I think if Pacific can hang in and not get too discouraged with a few poundings early on they'll continue to improve. Highlights for me yesterday were watching the guys (re) discover some off ball movement and watching one of our young high school boys get 4 goals. Now he thinks he's Lewandowski...nice to see the kid get a bit of confidence before reality sets in and we start to play some tougher matches.

 

[Regs]

Tell him he is more like Sergio Aguero and bring him back to earth.

 

[Blue and White Army]

Does anyone know the result of the Burnaby Selects United vs. Unicorns FC match in Division 3B, played Sunday 12:00 noon at Burnaby Lake West?

Apparently some clubs can't be arsed to email their results to the league...

 

[Regs]

In my mind, referees should be reporting scores... a central system that covers the whole province and ties in discipline reporting, assigning games and payments.

Such a system would not be hard to build, the roadblock would be getting everyone to buy into such a system.

 

[SmartCoach]

In my mind, referees should be reporting scores... a central system that covers the whole province and ties in discipline reporting, assigning games and payments.

Such a system would not be hard to build, the roadblock would be getting everyone to buy into such a system.

Yes yes yes
To many stubborn people in the way of this

 

[Canucks4Ever]

In my mind, referees should be reporting scores... a central system that covers the whole province and ties in discipline reporting, assigning games and payments.

Such a system would not be hard to build, the roadblock would be getting everyone to buy into such a system.

Something like this?
http://www.refcentre.com/

It covers HPL, local tournaments and if I'm not mistake the FVSL and college/university in BC as well. Not the VMSL though...that would be ridiculous...

 

[Canucks4Ever]

Also Regs anyway to get this thread renamed and stuck up with the other 3?? Looks a little weird with last year's Div 3 thread still stuck there no?

 

[Regs]

Also Regs anyway to get this thread renamed and stuck up with the other 3?? Looks a little weird with last year's Div 3 thread still stuck there no?

Done.

 

[Soccer Coach]

Campo Libre 1 - West Coast Celts 1. The Celts had a very good record of all wins with 19 goals versus 2. Thus, we had to play defensively. The team followed the plan, and it worked well. Their goal was an unfortunate bad bounce with a spin after an uncontrolled pass that ended on the net by pure luck. It felt a very undeserved course of events for our players who defended very well. However, the soccer Gods were on our side. In one of the counterattacks, our midfielder dribbled past two defenders into the corner, and then shot with no angle. The shot was so powerful that bounced from the chest into the post and then into the net. The counterattacks were well timed, and our boys should have finished 3 one on one situations with the goalie. One hit the post. Perhaps we payed too much respect to their record. Next time we can be more attacking minded.

 

[RickG]

Boners 4 -- Green Devils 0 yesterday out on Memorial SE grass. Greens played a lot better than their record shows and the Island boys were asleep for much of the first half. We were lucky not to give up a goal or two early on and our keeper made one Helluva save to keep the guys in it. Greens got some bad luck around 20 mins into the match when their keeper dragged down our winger on a breakaway, just outside the box and got sent off. But they played with spirit after that and it was still 0-0 at the half. The turning point was a foul in the box about 10 mins into the second half, leading to a PK which our guy finished nicely. After that, the result was never in doubt as Greens started to tire and our guys grew in confidence. Reflecting on the game afterwards, with such a lack lustre start, our guys felt lucky to get out of there with the points.