The Blitz returned to Arlington on Saturday morning to replay the match, and this time they came more ready to play than the Generals. With the Generals back on their heels for much of the first half, the Blitz probed their defense looking to strike first. Tight defending – and at one point the Generals’ crossbar – kept the General’s sheet clean, but the Blitz surely felt that they would eventually take the lead. The Generals, on the other hand, generated only sporadic offense, but in those periods they created a number of good scoring opportunities, including one shot at a wide open net that went agonizingly wide and several other platinum opportunities. Both teams could be rightly disappointed not to take a lead into the break.

The match turned out to be a tale of two halves, because after the break the Generals took over the match. With devastating attacks down both flanks, the Generals generated chance after chance. The Blitz keeper certainly did his part, but Coach Moser had to be beside himself: in the training session the night before the match he had focused on finishing, but all that hard work seemed to come to nothing!

Clearly playing for the draw late, the Blitz moved their speedy striker to center back, but still the Generals were able to generate several good chances. When the final whistle blew with the score 0-0, the Blitz were joyous, and the left the field to cheers. The Generals had their heads bowed, and they were ruing the chances that got away. And the Generals can take some solace in knowing that teams now consider a draw with them to be a good result. That said, it is now incumbent upon the Generals to learn to take care of business in these matches.

The tie may have eliminated the Generals’ chances of playing for the division title on the last day of the season, but promotion was still in their hands. With that in mind the Generals took to the field this afternoon against the bottom of the table FC Frederick. Once again however, Mother Nature seemed to have an interest in making the Generals work as hard as possible for promotion: at kickoff a 30-40 mph gale was sweeping the field, and the effect that this ‘breeze’ had on the game was, to put it mildly, substantial.

With the ball blowing this way and that, the Generals once again settled into a dominant position in the match, and once again struggled to find their finishing touch. Frederick made very little impression in the Generals’ half of the field, but for a second straight match – the day after the first – the Generals seemed unable to find their finishing touch.

In the dieing moments of the game all that changed, however, with the Generals finding that one precious strike to leave the field with a 1-0 win and their place in division 3 booked for the fall. If nothing else, the boys learned a valuable lesson about this beautiful and vexing game that we call soccer and the world calls football! The game flows from end to end, with beautiful and physical moments scattered throughout. Many times the better team wins by force of will, but on other occasions, when the better team is hard to determine, or when the fickle nature of the game conspires, the team that wins is the one that seizes the precious few moments that determine the outcome.

Well done Generals! Well done boys! Your unbeaten streak in league play is now at thirteen matches, and division 3 awaits. And for the value of the lesson you learned (you better have learned!) this weekend the cost was relatively low. Good luck in the Virginian next weekend, and good luck with the Gunners at the end of the season. Even if the game isn’t for the division title, it will be a chance to avenge your one loss in league play over the past two seasons.