September 28, 2014

The Foster Files: Sept. 28, 2014

Welcome to the second edition of the men’s soccer blog. This week has been very successful. We have played two games on the road, and come away with two wins. Altogether, we’ve scored nine goals, conceded zero and confidence within the squad is high.

Welcome to the second edition of the men's soccer blog. This week has been very successful. We have played two games on the road, and come away with two wins. Altogether, we've scored nine goals, conceded zero and confidence within the squad is high.

Wednesday saw us travel to Trevecca Nazerene in Nashville. This game was a potential banana skin for us because, to a certain extent, we knew nothing about this team. We started the game at an incredible intensity, which saw us take a 6-0 lead into half time. We created a huge number of chances, and were pretty clinical in front of goal, finishing most of them – that is, other than Stuart Oliver's glaring open goal, middle of the box miss from 4 yards out! He has certainly taken some stick for that one this week.

Taking such a dominant lead into the 2^nd half we were able to rotate the squad to see every player that travelled get some minutes on the field, and also to rest some players. The quality of the squad goes a lot deeper this year, and it is great that we can rotate comfortably; this will be extremely advantageous as the games come thick and fast.

On Saturday we made the trip to Brevard, which is never an easy place to go and win. Brevard tend to sit in with 11 players behind the ball making them very hard to break down at home. The game was as we expected it to be, and how the coaches told us it would be pre-game. It was a real scrap and a battle. For the spectators on the side, it won't have been the prettiest of matches they have ever seen, but we battled hard and did what we had to do. We scored a goal in each half and remained defensively solid for the 90 minutes and came away with the victory.

This week is a huge week for us. We turnaround immediately and travel to Wingate Monday afternoon, followed by Tusculum at home on Wednesday, and then a trip to Lenoir-Rhyne on Saturday. Having 4 games in a week (including Brevard) is tough, and this is where the squad depth will be critical. We are the only team in the conference with an unblemished league record, albeit from two games, but we are in no mood to let that go. Also, three shutouts in a row and a hugely improved defensive shape has made us a very difficult team to break down, so we will be looking to keep this run going tomorrow afternoon.

Finally, on Friday evening, all the international players were invited to a welcome dinner at President O'Brien's house. There was great food, conversation, and games throughout the evening. There was also a private soccer coaching lesson for the president and some intense frisbee games for some of the team. Safe to say, President O'Brien has got better frisbee technique than all of us!

Let's make our record read 5-0 in the conference by my blog next week.

Have a great week and hopefully see you all in the bleachers on Wednesday evening, 7:30 p.m. against Tusculum.

Duncan

Throughout the 2014 soccer season, senior defender Duncan Foster will write about his experiences at Carson-Newman. A new installment will be released each Sunday evening.