I Love the First Day
Elizabeth’s Gallery
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Stolen The Wire Epigraph
“I love the first day, man. Everybody all friendly an' #$%@”
For those of you who haven’t seen The Wire, it is your standard crime procedural where the police are devoted public servants and solve a juicy case each week.
What a gorgeous day for a match! Racing played to a standing room only crowd (well everyone in my section was standing) and came away with a point against the North Carolina Courage. Despite the result and “dropped points”, it was hard to have too many complaints about the match.
First matches are tough, but they can be an indicator of how the season might go. In this case, I think it is pretty safe to be encouraged. There will be plenty of time for discouragement later and I quite often lead the charge on that front, but all-in-all…not a bad start.
Instant “Un”alysis
At some point in the second half Emma Sears was flagged for being offside as the play was allowed to develop to its conclusion. Somebody in the Estopinal End yelled at the side official to complain. When I say the Estopinal End, I do in fact mean the area of the stadium when you have a view that is not conducive to making any kind of judgement call on offside offenses. The person was a) clearly wrong because Sears was at least a yard offside and b) very loud due to the lack of people in the crowd.
Please do not yell at the officials when you are wrong. It cheapens when I yell at the officials, and I only yell when I am right.
Post Match Moment of Match
Taylor Flint gave one of the best 1-1 draw press interviews in my memory. Watch it here. I think maybe she was happy not to give it in the rain. Regardless, when I asked her about hitting the post she gave a terrific answer filled with honesty and joy at what might have been saying, “I would have retired if I made that.” She felt in her gut that it was going to go in. For anyone who has ever played, you know that you remember the near misses much longer than the ones that go in.
Did the club/stadium have good food?
It was your standard club fare in the premium club this week. The chimichurri ribs were a nice touch and there was hot chocolate available! The line was self-service which was a bit of a change. We will see how that goes. For busier matches they might have servers dishing out food as in the past, but the rain may have thrown off the staff bookings. Also, an unnamed 5-year-old kept drinking water from the ledge in our loge box and held her mouth open to catch what I hope were raindrops and not runoff from the overhead sections.
Stink-O-Meter
Mercifully, a zero on the Odor Awareness Scale that runs 0-6. For those of you who never go to matches, Butchertown is known for its colorful smells. All you have to do to imagine it is read the name of the neighborhood again. If there was a positive to the rain, it is that it kept the odor in the stadium to a minimum.
A few days earlier when Elizabeth and I visited the stadium for the food sampling, I think I would give is a 5. Having not been in Butchertown since last November, the odor hit me like a sock of nickels that had also been sitting in a rendering plant floor for two weeks. Elizabeth and I carry essential oil nasal inhalers with us when we go to the stadium. They aren’t a bad investment but only really provide brief relief on a bad night. Anyway…
0 for 1 home matches with offensive odors…
Let’s keep the streak alive, but maybe without the rain next time.
The Kayla Fischer Honorary Yellow Card of the Match
Goes to…NOBODY!
Bev was frankly stunned when I told her that Racing played a match without picking up a yellow card. The unit played cohesively, and the players didn’t put their teammates into positions that usually produce yellow cards, so I think that is a win. I fully expect this to not be the case for the entire season. I like a good strategic yellow card.
Elizabeth’s Commentary
Every so often, Elizabeth will have comments about the match. Find them here:
“I forgot just how much I missed the Racing games. Except for the weather. I always forget that there’s weather to deal with.”
“It sounds like a pocketful of rain”
“Green Isaac”/Swoon/1984
Yeah, I don’t really know what that means either, but I liked the sound of it. I am going to interpret it as experiencing something purely. That’s probably not quite it, but for our purposes it will work.
Racing looks to be a much more polished team and has smoothed out some of their rougher edges. Taken with or without its previous baggage, the performance was assured and disciplined. Here are some thoughts:
“Forget the style and chose from 12 notes”: Racing’s tactics and approach wasn’t anything too fancy, and it was similar to everything we had seen before, just done better and more assuredly. One thing that certainly stood out was the set pieces and especially the set piece delivery. Petersen put in a terrific ball on the corner from which Sears ultimately scored. Her other deliveries and the ones of her teammates were also good. Racing is going to have to “steal” points to make the playoffs and set piece proficiency is about the best way to do it in my opinion based on this team’s current setup and composition.
“I hear you ‘re still wet behind the ears”: The young players will be a deciding factor in how far Racing goes this season. There were good signs from Sears (still young if not a rookie), O’Kane, and “Sweb/Swebs" (Weber). Swebs (I think I like the “ending in s version”) does that thing where you are on the right attacking side and cut inside and shoot with your left foot. That is one of my favorite “things”. I will be looking forward to getting looks at some of the other younger players.
“The most eloquent way to speak or to pray is straight from the heart”: Look, I am still “me” and realism is surely coming right around the corner, but I don’t have anything bad to say about last night’s performance. I think the goal Racing conceded is just one of those goals that you end up giving up to good teams when you are trying to build on a lead. It’s too early to talk or think about “dropped points”. In this league, it’s hard to consider a 1-goal lead as anything approaching a guarantee especially one taken so early. The signs of a decent team are there. Racing just has to keep building.
