Purple robbed of victory by bad call

Purple faced quite a challenge last night against Whitby Green: they've improved significantly since the first meeting between the two teams and recently moved into second place behind Purple. Wind was a major factor in this game, with strong gusts coming in over the northeast corner of the field, giving Green a decided advantage during the first half (the wind was much less gusty during the second half, so that Purple didn't derive quite as much advantage in their turn).

Purple's players were late in arriving at the field, so Anthony C. (who usually plays forward) had to sub in as keeper until his cousin Nick M. arrived and got on to the field. Anthony had a flurry of activity during the 10 minutes of his shift, with Purple yielding three corner kicks in that span. Between the wind and the highly physical style of play used by the Green forwards, Purple was pretty much trapped in their own end for most of the first half. Green's pressure resulted in a 1-goal lead that held up until near the end of the half, when Mitch B. was able to move up the field and score the equalizer.

With the switch in ends, the second half was a mirror-image of the first, with Green pushed back on their heels and Purple constantly attacking. Mitch scored his second goal to give Purple their only lead of the night, with a clever move on a Corey M. corner kick.

The game had started off very physical, and the contact got progressively more and more uncontrolled as the game went on. The referee failed to clamp down on it early in the game, so one thing built on another and it was starting to resemble a rugby game at times. Victor R., Marco B., and Mark M. were each subject to repeated "head-hunting" by Green players, and Jordan S. had to leave the game after a spectacular tackle-from-behind that the referee somehow failed to notice. Adding insult to injury, the referee gave verbal warnings to Victor and Marco even though they were the players being fouled.

Near the end of the game, Mitch was tackled from behind just outside the 6-yard box (which should have resulted in a penalty shot for Purple). It was so obviously an intentional attempt to prevent a shot on goal that Purple's forwards were busy arguing about who should take the shot — ignoring the fact that the referee was indicating a free kick in the other direction. A quick-thinking Green defender ran up and booted the ball forward, and Purple was caught absolutely flat-footed. A few seconds later, Green had equalized.

And that was the end of the game.