UUNITED Hangs Tough (don't we always?)

Well, last night's game was not exactly how I envisioned my return to the soccer pitch after an almost three month long search and weather-related layoff. After rain throughout the day the sky finally cleared, the sun came out and it was fine soccer weather.

But alas, as seems to happen at least once every season, a ton of our players couldn't make the game - sickness, injury, working late, out of town - all of these (excuses, excuses!) conspired to leave a rag-tag group of nine of us standing around the pitch with dread in our eyes as the match began.

Soccer, as you might know is a game with two sides of eleven players on the pitch at a time, so we were not even able to field a full team - much less have some subs around so we could catch a breather now and then!

Just for perspective, our roster is usually around 20 players, which allows for people to miss games now and then while still leaving us plenty of fresh legs to run around on. So having only nine players was pretty weird, especially since we had done everything we could to recruit some extra warm bodies to come help us out.

But anyway...

We took the field, and were cheered when Shaun trotted onto the field, taking our number up to ten. There was a strong wind at our backs, and we took immediate advantage, racing up the field on our still-fresh legs for four strong goals in the first half. We would need every one of those early goals to see us through, however, as we were all starting to get increasingly tired after halftime, while our opponents had a full team plus three subs to run at us.

We only managed to score once more in the second half, while they scored three more times, bringing the score to 5-4 with us barely clinging to what had once seemed like an insurmountable lead. At one point I overheard Shaun ask the ref how many minutes were left (by that time we were counting every second!), but I couldn't hear what the ref said. I called over, "Shaun, how many minutes left? and he just looked back at me with a somewhat grim expression and said, "Too many!"

That pretty much summed it up. We did hold on to win 5-4, and went out for some food and drink to celebrate after. Everything tastes better after a win.

I am feeling it today though - even my elbows are sore, although that might have something to do with the increasingly physical defense I was playing as the game wore on...Overall, I would definately not have chosen my first game back to be so gruelling - but it really was a blast, sore bones and all.