Oswego/Cortland

I still don’t know the answer but I am now in my senior year and I have only beaten Oswego once and I barely played that game. We beat them my freshman year and I spent most of that game stuck in the training room.
For the second year in a row we lost to them in overtime. We know that a lot of teams live to beat Plattsburgh and Oswego definitely circle us on their schedule every year. I have to give credit to them, they are doing something right against us and I still can’t figure it out. I think the less said about this game the better but after getting out of a hole last week we have firmly put ourselves right back in it. Two losses in conference is a hard thing to take. I know we will bounce back from this and we will be in the mix at the end of the season but the chances of us hosting the SUNYAC tournament appear slim. The one thing I can count on is that anyone in this conference can beat anyone on any day.
The Cortland game was a much better performance from us. We switched our formation back to the old 4-4-2 and I think it will really change us as a team. We were playing a 4-5-1 and I personally loved it, I got hours of time on the ball and there were always options. Unfortunately we were not playing it the way it was supposed to be played and we gave our opposition too much time on the back at the back. Going back to two strikers is going to help our strikers more than anyone. I think Shaughnessy will benefit from not having all of the workload and there will be more opportunities for the forwards to make it onto the field. Hamilton started up top and was nothing short of sensational. He worked his backside off, made runs and was a target. That is something we needed up there. I think a lot of teams we have faced have had an easy ride at the back physically and that ends when Hammy is up there. I also moved further up the field to my old attacking mid position and it was nice to be back among the attackers, I liked the amount of touches I got at holding mid but there is nothing better than attacking. I even felt I had a bit more energy despite my old legs and gut. Although Hammy was a revelation up top, no one was better Saturday than Erik Hakim. We have all known he had the talent, I remember the first day of pre-season last year when he was a freshman and he scissored someone and curled one top bin, it was beautiful. Sometimes he gets in his own head and tries to do too much, but when he does his job he is brilliant. That is exactly what he did on Saturday; he stayed at holding mid and bossed it. They had to switch people on the other team just so they could try and win headers against him and it still didn’t work.
The first half was all us; we know we played well because coach didn’t make a sub until about ten minutes left in the half which must be some sort of record for him. We were getting chance after chance and we really have to start putting them away. You will not get too many chances in conference games and teams will punish you if you don’t take them. We went into half time feeling great everyone was happy and smiling but I think we stepped off the gas in the second half. Andy even had to come up with a brilliant save to keep us in it. I always knew we would win this match it was just a case of when we would score. Going into overtime I still knew that we would come out with the win and Hamilton got the goal that he deserved. Someone played a ball into him with his back to goal and he laid it off to me and took if forward and played in Payne who cut inside and used his chocolate leg to get a shot off, the keeper spilled it and Hamilton was right there to knock in the rebound.
I think he is going to go on a bit of a run in the way of goals now and so will one of our other forwards. It only takes one sometimes and the confidence just flows. Next weekend is another massive weekend against Oneonta and New Paltz. Oneonta are probably desperate for a piece of us after we ended their season last year and we are desperate for a piece of them. New Paltz is a team that can definitely give us problems and we have to stop the complacency that we becoming known for.
Also a little mention for Champions League that we play in practice on a Monday. Waterbury creates “random” teams and we play about five games that last seven minutes, you get points individually if your team wins and if you score. So far I definitely have to be up there because I am playing target man and netting G’s. I have been on the same team as Googz both weeks now and we have dominated although Binder has had a couple of decent weeks as well. I will post the chart when Waterbury finally decides to make it up.

And here is this weeks Showboat from Soccer AM