Women's Premier 2008/2009

[Welcome Wagon]

I just looked at the MWSL site and it seems as though there are now 10 teams. Does anyone know anything about the new teams? Just curious. Seems like a lot of teams, especially since one of the top teams no longer exists....

WW

 

[Conductor]

What team are you going to play for now WWagon?

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Richmond Club Ireland United is one of the new teams. It will be a difficult year for us but within three years we should be quite competitive. I'm still waiting to hear on a few players.......if those players come on board, we will not be far away come Cup time, assuming every team makes Provincials like it has been in previous years......

The Coquitlam City Slickers have some good players on their team. They're a tight group and are fairly young. They handily won the Provincial 'B' Cup this year and should be able to stay competitive. Lots of changes in the league..........Westside must be an early favorite along with Coquitlam, and if Surrey United can land a decent coach, they will be in the mix again. It should be a challenging season for us but as long as we improve through the season and playing our best in February/March, then it will be worth the move up.

 

[Welcome Wagon]

What team are you going to play for now WWagon?

Coquitlam (not the new team)

 

[Welcome Wagon]

Just a thought, 2 teams have already dropped out of the league and the season hasn't even begun. Wouldn't it have been courteous for these 2 teams to figure their stuff out before the schedule was made? All teams should have to submit some sort of roster a few weeks before the start of the season to prove that they can actually field a team. Waiting until the first day of the season and then bailing is not cool at all. I know we were all looking forward to playing...... 2 straight bye weeks to start off the season, and I am sure the same can be said for many other teams....

 

[Regs]

Who bailed WW?

 

[dezza]

I heard SBAA dropped a few days ago... looking at Coquitlam's sched, the other one must be Semiahmoo who are listed as defaulting to them this week.

 

[Welcome Wagon]

Semi and Beavers.

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Just a thought, 2 teams have already dropped out of the league and the season hasn't even begun. Wouldn't it have been courteous for these 2 teams to figure their stuff out before the schedule was made? All teams should have to submit some sort of roster a few weeks before the start of the season to prove that they can actually field a team. Waiting until the first day of the season and then bailing is not cool at all. I know we were all looking forward to playing...... 2 straight bye weeks to start off the season, and I am sure the same can be said for many other teams....

It's shocking to be honest.........but at least now we've just qualified for the Provincials.

Sorry to hear that, WW, that you were supposed to be playing. We get to start on Sunday against the top team, which will be interesting considering.........oh I won't say it. We'll just see what happens and thank goodness, every team makes Provincials AND no one is getting relegated..............

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Surrey United 2 Richmond CIU 0

Great start to the season for our women. The result to be honest doesn't mean a lot at this point in time but the effort of our team does. We created several good opportunities in the second half when SU were tiring. They have a lot of experience on the team and their second goal was an absolute bullet to the top corner from about 25-30 yards out. Great shot. Other than that, they had one shot in open play and scored the other goal on a ball which bounced off our keeper's shin right to a girl who was outside the 18 and she hit first time bouncing it into the goal. It was an unlucky break for our player who was playing in goal but she did great throughout. Thanks, Ashley, for going in goal.

The field was great.......although I was surprised at how much some of the SU were complaining when there was any contact made on them... especially when they were dishing it out too? I guess when you're 5 time defending champions, you get a few breaks along the way......and some 50/50 calls going your wat. New kids on the block have to earn the respect, so we will continue to try and do that. Both teams were obviously missing players as we had 2 subs and SU had 1 sub but overall I'm sure SU were satisfied with the 3 points and we satisfied with our performance.

Well done to SU and good luck at the Nationals in a month.

 

[Conductor]

This reminds me of my old sunday morning's after a night at the Roxy!

Semi and Beavers.

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Richmond CIU 'A' 4 Westside F.C. 3

We certainly made it difficult at the end of the day but it was great to get our first points in Premier. Westside is a physical side with good work ethic. Our new Swedish signing scored 2 and set up 1. Classy player. We were up 2 - 0 at the half.....we started well and went up 1 - 0 5 minutes in, then Westside took it to us....but we scored against the run of play to make it 2 - 0.

We were defending as a team much better in the second half.....until we lost 2 key defenders in 5 minutes....one due to injury and one due to work. We then went up 3 - 0 after being awarded a penalty for hand ball. At this point, we went to a 4 - 4 - 2, which was okay until an absolutely bullet of a shot from about 30 yards......top corner, great goal. IT was 3 - 1 now and Westside was gaining momentum. We were losing our shape quickly due to the fact we had to switch players around to cope with the two defenders not being there. Jumping to a 4 - 5 - 1(a la Walter Smith), we apparently forgot that it still means you have to mark despite having bodies there. Westside was awarded a penalty with about 9 minutes to go and scored. 3 - 2.......then with about 5 minutes to go, they equalized again due to terrible coverage on our part.......3 - 3 and just when the heads could have gone down. We through another up front again and managed to score with 2 minutes to go from about 20 yards out.

I'm confident that if we were able to keep our same backline in tact, we would have avoided the finish we had but the girls battled right to the end and earned the 3 points. Great job to Westside for coming back from 3 down....that is very tough to do but they almost pulled it off.

On to Coquitlam next week, which again, will be a great challenge for our team. We will have played 3 of the 4 semi-finalists in last year's provincials after next weekend, and hopefully we will have made a good account of ourselves. I think we have so far in the first two games but next week is another tough one.

 

[nutmegs]

On to Coquitlam next week, which again, will be a great challenge for our team. We will have played 3 of the 4 semi-finalists in last year's provincials after next weekend, and hopefully we will have made a good account of ourselves.

Actually CS, Coquitlam wasn't a semi-finalist last year. They were SU, Westside, Surrey FC and Gorge.

Surrey beat the NSGSC Renegades 7-2 today. Guess we enjoy the 9:30am kickoff in North Van. Game started off poorly for us as our defending was weak and allowed/gifted them a couple of goals. They scored first, we tied it, then fully gifted them a goal before we tied it again and then took the lead 3-2 before half.

Second half and the game was over about 15 mins in. Their offence is great (they were missing Ros in the game) but the backline kept trying to play the ball around us and we just stole the ball almost every time. Needless to say it felt good for our team to score that many goals and we didn't even come close to having our best game.

BTW, four of the first five were scored by yours truly.

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Oh that's right.........the great draw and all from last year.

Lots of goals have been scored early on........hopefully we can keep that total down next weekend against Coquitlam. From what I've heard, they will be the team to beat this year.....no disrespect to any other teams of course because every game will be a tough game for us.

On to Coquitlam next Friday.

 

[SC]

Hey Nutmegs,

Sounds like quite the round-up of goals for you... What's your report on playing against the RCIU team? I haven't seen any of the Premier games this year...AND...I only get the Captain's report on these things...

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Hey Nutmegs,

Sounds like quite the round-up of goals for you... What's your report on playing against the RCIU team? I haven't seen any of the Premier games this year...AND...I only get the Captain's report on these things...

Yes, I posted six posts up on the game.......but it could be my 'biased' view.

 

[SC]

You're right Captain, I should have really said "I only get the Captain's report on these games...I wonder what the real story is...or is there another side to the tall tales you tell me?"

Nutty, I heard that you didn't score any goals against the new RCIU team...so I was just wondering why...or...were you off that day?

Obviously I'm still curious as I'm on the mend, but will probably only get back on the premier pitch between the pipes

I am however, enjoying the RCIU talegate parties because there seems to be one every Friday and Saturday evening...not good for the eyes right Brucey?

 

[nutmegs]

Nutty, I heard that you didn't score any goals against the new RCIU team...so I was just wondering why...or...were you off that day?

Obviously I'm still curious as I'm on the mend, but will probably only get back on the premier pitch between the pipes

Let me think back...it was 3 weeks ago now. I have to give credit to RCIU - they came out hard and played well. We definitely weren't at full fitness, only had 12 players (2 of which shouldn't have played 90 mins due to injury) and Kevin the ref (aka Pipes) commented before the game that he didn't recognize most of our team. But we will take the three points.

You are right, SC, I didn't score in that game but despite what Cappy says I'm seem to remember our team creating a few more scoring chances than just the 2 he gave us credit for. I seem to remember about 5-6 straight corners during one spell. Also, not to make excuses for not scoring, but I did injure my right knee at about the 15 min mark (hyper-extended/meniscus sprain), but continued to play the rest of the game and ended up having to sit out the last week and a half - this past weekend was my real full test of it after two very light training sessions.

Finally, in response to Cappy's comments about the giving it out and not taking it. Believe me, we don't mind a physical game and part of the reason why we have been successful is because we actually enjoy it and are usually the most physical team on the field. But when the physical shots are pretty late or nowhere near the ball, you're gonna hear a few comments to the ref.

There's my opinion SC - of course it is probably just as biased as Captain's. But it's funny, I was going to post after our game against RCIU and say that they should do okay this year and might even pull off a few upsets - and lo and behold they did exactly that in week 3.

 

[Captain Shamrock]

RCIU 'A' 3 Coquitlam 0


Coquitlam had only 11 players at the game and had the majority of possession over the first 25 minutes of the game but failed to create any real scoring opportunities. Slowly, we started to come into the game and keeping the ball for longer periods of time. Our new Swedish girl scored a cracker before half-time and I believe this was around the time one of the Coquitlam girls had to go off due to injury. The second half was great for us. We scored two more goals while they were down to 10 and to be honest, we kept the ball for the majority of the half. Having said that, Coquitlam went down to 9 players with about 15 - 20 minutes left when the game was already decided. They should have had a red card for a last player back offense but we can only assume the ref didn't want to have them lose another player which is fair enough. I know Coquitlam will be a very good team this year so we're not looking at this game and thinking anything more than the fact we played some good football in the second half. With a full squad, I'm sure they will be one of the teams to beat come Provincial Cup time.

 

[Conductor]

As a ref Captain,

They should have had a red card for a last player back offense but we can only assume the ref didn't want to have them lose another player which is fair enough.

shouldn't the laws of the game be called no matter what the scoreline is or player personal numbers are?