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Daito Bunka Uni, Saturday 26th Jan,
An 85 minute train ride and a 10 minute bus to Daito Bunka were this Swiss’ reward for having been a dedicated founding member of the TML. Unfortunately, without grounds to offer, that’s our value to the league these days. “If you can find it, you can play” is the way it feels sometimes. Anyway, both the Vags and the Swiss made a considerable effort to get to what eventually was a decent pitch to play on. The Swiss had to draw on their considerable reserves to come up with volunteers for this weekend’s match – and scraped by with some new recruits up front. The Vags seemed to have their full team and, considering the difficulty the Swiss had the previous match breaching their defense, it didn’t look good pre-match.
Fortunately for the Swiss, most of their regulars were in defense so that was going to be their strength. In attack, it was truly patchwork and the manager was hoping some long bombs out of midfield would be enough to get by Taylor for a 1-0 win – that was the strategy. Incredibly though, with only 3-4 minutes gone in the game, a lazy back pass into the Vags area enabled a speedy forward to get to it first, he was then clattered into by the late arriving Taylor. The stand in ref had no qualms about screaming ‘Karl’ or penalty in this case and Kirk banged it home for a 1-0 lead. 5 minutes later, a shot from distance was saved by Taylor but bounced away enabling Yuji to run in and knock it by him for a 2-0 lead. Just a few minutes after that, a nice run by one of the forwards opened up the defense and a pass into the middle to an open Aoki allowed him to shoot into the left hand corner for a 3-0 lead. Clearly, the Vags had not had their Red Bull, shochu, Energen, or whatever kind of pick me up juice, cream, injections, etc… you need after the 60 kilometers traveled. It was a very cruel start and one which they never really recovered from.
The Swiss generally did a nice job of moving the ball out of the back, through Kirk or Aoki in midfield but were stifled by the big four Vags across the back. In defense, Konno and Raffa were solid in the middle while Seiji and Suzuki were overlapping and recovering quickly. Coming the other way, the Vags had two speedy runners up front – Alex Sahara is tough to keep up with and he is always looking for the ball. He would be more dangerous if he picked up the ball and ran at the defenders – his runs were across the back line and he rarely got a clean look at goal. Unfortunately, the one time he did after a clearance mistake by the Swiss defense, he picked it up and shot it nicely into the right side of goal past a stranded Peter. The Vags did start to put some moves together but due to the tight marking by the forwards, shots from distance by the midfield were the only option but few of these ended up on target. The first half ended with the Swiss up 3-1 and looking comfortable on the ball but occasionally getting opened up by Vag counter attacks when their passing broke down in the attacking third.
I think Jed tried to fire up the Vags at half time but the flow of the game didn’t change too much. Karl came on up front for the Swiss and that slowed down some of the ball movement but generally the Swiss had more possession, but couldn’t get the last goal. The Vags would win most of the crosses due to their superiority in the air but couldn’t get the final balls past a well organized Swiss defense. A final goal for the Swiss would eventually come following a corner kick, which was cleared out once, was put in again by Aoki for Nakayama to out jump his defender and put it in the upper right hand corner. It was a nice finish and deserved considering the Swiss had two shots bounce off the post just before the last goal with 3 minutes to go. For the Swiss, it was a nice recovery after last weeks silly loss to the arbiter aided Celts and hopefully it doesn’t mean that the season is already lost with another 8 games to play
Report by Kirk Neureiter
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