Too much to handle
Published 12:15 am Saturday, March 10, 2012
TROY — Charles Henderson’s aggressive style of play in the first half was too much for the young Andalusia team, as the Trojans went on to beat the Bulldogs 9-0 in soccer action Friday night.
The Bulldogs trailed early on in the first half as Charles Henderson’s Mitchell Mobley scored his first of four goals within the first minute of the match.
CHHS then went on to add goals at the 19th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 27th and the 35th minute of the first half to take a 7-0 half time lead.
“First off, we were flat and slow,” AHS coach Tim Ramsden said. “We definitely didn’t mark very tightly.”
Ramsden went on to explain that “marking” is a technique, describing how a defender advances on an offensive player.
Andalusia’s players were sticking their legs out, instead of advancing their foot parallel to the defender, Ramsden said.
Mobley scored at the 19th minute, Alex Dorrity scored at the 20th minute to make the game 3-0; and Brandon McLendon scored the next two goals at the 22nd and 23rd minutes to help CHHS take a 5-0 lead.
Then, Mobley added his third goal four minutes later to give the Trojans a massive 6-0 lead.
Charles Henderson took the 7-0 lead at half time after Mobley’s fourth goal at the 35th minute.
Trailing by a large margin, Andalusia turned things around in the second half, playing a little more aggressively against the seasoned Trojans soccer team.
Setting up a wall on a CHHS free kick, the Bulldogs blocked the kick at the 46th minute to put up a stop at another score.
With this added momentum and with a new goalkeeper in the box, Andalusia played with their hearts out the first 30 minutes of the second half.
Andalusia’s Ben Jackson came in as the keeper in place of Lucas Denney, who left the game with a possible meniscus tear in his knee.
Jackson, matching the Trojans’ aggressiveness, made some quality saves for his Bulldogs team.
“He’s never played there before, so I’m very impressed with him to come out there and do that,” Ramsden said about Jackson.
Ramsden also pointed out a couple more positives he saw in a “better” second half from the Bulldogs.
“We were a lot more aggressive in the second half,” he said. “We played with 12 players in the end, which is very difficult to do against a 22-man squad.”
Ramsden said he had three girls playing the majority of the game.
And, “I thought some of the younger ones — Adam Peek played pretty well in the second half,” Ramsden said. “Cameron Phillips, he’s a seventh grader starting, he did pretty good.”
Charles Henderson scored its last two goals off of a free kick from McLendon, and off of a long pass to Dorrity within the last 10 minutes of the match.
With this loss, Andalusia falls to 0-2 on the season, and will visit Enterprise on March 20 in its third match of the season.