Bears Armed vs. Taeshan
Venue: The White Fortress, Gladerial, Valanora.
Score: 4-2. (Bears Armed wins.)
Goals
Bears Armed (4): Charpentaye (#11) @ 04’ (assist: Thunderbolt [#10]); Grearh’hratch (#7) @ 15’ (assist: Lightning [#06]); NorthWalker (#12) @ 24’ (assist: Norr-Vurra [#5]); Tahrra (#22) @ 52’ (assist: Lightning [#6]).
Taeshan (2): Lafayette (#11) @ 37’ (assist: Sneijder [#9]); Swanson (#11) @ 90+5’ (assist: Sneijder [#9]).
Penalties
Bears Armed (0): (none)
Taeshan (1): Swanson (#11) @ 54’ (saved…)
Red Cards
(none)
Substitutions due to Injury
Bears Armed (1): Bears Armed (1): Thunderbolt (#10, @ 39’ (possible hamstring; replaced by Tahrra [#22]…)
Taeshan (0): (none)
(Jammy Urrsen [reporter’s notes…])
Taeshan have a long history in international football, possibly began even before the Belles’ first attempts — Fleas and Fur-loss! Why did whatever cosmic effect apparently re-set the dates for “the old days” have to scramble so many of our records from that period along the way?! (1) Anyhows, they seem to be among the nations whose teams played against the Belles a few times but without any special friendship or rivalry developing. Not sure how much knowledge about those encounters their current squad & staff would have, though…
Both teams are out on the pitch. Our girls have had it explained that their opponents’ purple kits do not indicate any affinity with the ‘Purple Empire’ of our own land’s history, just maybeso a symbolic or aesthetic choice based on their own culture’s values.
Belles do the harrdiharr, while Karra — in her role as a member of the coaching staff now, as well as because she played in last time’s winning squad, holds the Cup itself proudly up high: The organisers have said that we can hold onto it unless & until we get knocked out of the contest, they’ll only re-claim it then.(2)
Taeshan ‘Lil’ Purple Knights’ are using a more defensively-styled formation than the Belles: Apparently this is normal for them, admittedly they “only” have a win and a draw as against the Belles’ two wins so far here, but they’re on a total of 3 goals scored and a DG of +2 against the Belles’ 8 & +6… while letting in 2, the same as urrs. Hr’rmm…
Belles win the toss, Thunderbolt takes the kick and passes to Grearh’hratch, front row charges upfield while not only ourr Midfielders but — in a return to “old style” play for the Belles, rather than the slightly more cautious style favoured during DBC45 — also ourr ‘lynchpin’ Karrchrra’s-daughter advance into that end of the field. Could be a little bit tricky getting enough people back in time if the Knights manage a counter-attack… “If”, they do… but maybeso their own focus on defending their half makes this seem a risk worth taking. (Or maybeso it’s just the players getting keener than the coaches had planned? But I’d have expected Norr-Vurra, at least, to follow the pre-match instructions…). Anyhows, O TrustyHand — who’s been selected as the Belles’ starting goalie, this time around is pretty fast on her feet herself and doesn’t seem worried.
Belles press forwards, as seems so natural, and dominate possession although the sheer number of defensive players makes getting a clear shot at the goal difficult. Thunderbolt powers the ball in, but it bounces off of Garrett — the Knights’ LB — and goes out for a B-A corner. Thunderbolt takes that shot, and sends the ball arching high over the crowd in front of goalmouth to Charpentaye who’s “lurking” by the far post and head it down & in while Knight’s goalie Leyton is heading for the right side of the goal but guesses that she’d head it high instead. 1-0 to urrs.
Play continues, similar patterns.
Knights’ first serious counter-attack attempt: Swanson has the ball, and is racing into the Belles’ half with Lafayette scrambling to catch up as support, but a pincer move by Norr-Vurra & Lightning smells him dispossessed and Lightning sends a long pass to Grearh’hratch who’s currently out on the wing. Maybeso the Knights expect her to pass to either Thunderbolt or Charpentaye instead of going for goal herself, because that’s what they’re mainly concentrating to block, but she spots an opening and uses an off-pawed tap to slide it quickly & smoothly — right between two sets of purple feet! — into the bottom of the net while the defence itself makes it hard for Leyton to smell what’s coming. Only ten moments(3) into the game, and already the Belles have a 2-goal lead.
And then, only six — hokay, just closer to seven — moments later, the Belles score again! This time it starts within the main “crowd” right in front of Taeshan’s goal: Norr-Vurra has closed right up there and manages to intercept a pass between Marchand (one of their two ‘Centre Backs’) and their captain Sneijder (a ‘Central Attacking Midfielder’, that is in sort-of the same role that Norr-Vurra herself fills except that she’s started less “central”…), which might otherwise have been the start of another counter-attack. NV decides to that the best way to get the ball out from among the Knights before they re-claim it is by booting it strongly over to NorthWalker, who’s out to her right and just outside the 18-yard line at what seems too tight an angle to score… but Northwalker volleys it back, managing to put just enough swerve on that shot to take it into the far corner of the net! 3-0!!!
The Knights are playing it very defensively now… The Knights are playing it verrry defensively now…
Leyton punches away a shot on target by Thunderbolt (and then starts feeling that hand carefully with his other one, with a look of pain on his face), and it goes to Benjamin; He heads it to Sneijder, who’s currently just on “our” side of the press; Sneijder catches the ball on his chest, and grounds it, then pirouettes quickly and sends it on a long shot into the Belles’ half; and how did Lafayette get there without being noticed & marked?! Lafayette runs for goal, our Backs close in on him but he slips past both of them, he reaches the 18-yard line, he’s still running, O TrustyHand comes forwards slightly to “meet” him,,, and he slips past her as well! The Belles’ goal is temporarily wide open and, before O Trustyhand can get back onto her line, Lafayette taps the ball neatly “straight down the middle” to claw back a goal for the Knights! 3-1, now, still smelling good for the Belles but maybeso a sign that they need to be maybeso a bit warier themselves?
Shortly after that, Thunderbolt launches a shot at the Knights’ goal after charging forwards in such a determined way that the defenders seem to me to have been trying harder to get out of her way than to stop her. Leyton manages to smother it, because the sheer number of other players around the box meant that she just didn’t have room to manoeuver onto a line further from his reach. She stops suddenly, clutches her right calf, and sits down. The referee stops play, Chiarroya Cook(4) and her assistants come across from the side-line… They’re talking with Thunderbolt, and checking her leg. They’re helping her off of the pitch… Word is that she might have a hamstring problem, caused by having to make a sudden jerk sideways to avoid running straight into one of the defenders, but hopefully it’s just a less serious pulled muscle instead.
M.U.NV.(5) is sending Tahrra [#22] on as a replacement Forward, giving this promising novice her debut for the Belles. The Knights see this and start complaining to the referee because what they smell is one player being replaced by tow, but he has been briefed properly in advance of the game and points out the NSWCC rule about Ursine identical twins… Sneijder argues on, until he’s shown a yellow card for it, even so.
Nothing else significant before half-time.
Again, I’d really like to know what the other side’s boss told their players during the break. Anyhows, they come out looking more determined — as well as less, some of them, less exhausted — than when they went in. He’s just made all three of his changes at this point, Wagner [#24] for Leyton in goal, and Martin [#12] & Cortizon [#14] replacing Benjamin & Marchand — both of whom presumably had had too much facing the belles’ attacks to continue, too — in their back row.
Within moments the pattern from the first half, with most of the Belles pressing up into the last third of the pitch while the Knights focus desperately on defence, is back in place. That concentration around their own goal doesn’t let the Knights keep the Belles from opening the score back up to a four-goal advantage for urrs, though, because less than five moments later a high kick from Lightning (all that she could manage in that crowd, where there wasn’t enough clearance for anything closer to the ground) takes the ball onto one of Tahrra’s heads, she flicks it sideways onto her other head, and from there it goes straight over Wagner’s head into — and through! — the back of the net. Now, that’s POWER!
Wagner shows some power himself at this point, kicking the ball way into the Belles’ half where Swanson and Lafayette are running with renewed vigour to catch up. Lafayette gets it, and continues into the box where he’s tackled “too high” by Greerh, daughter of Tuwoloh — who’s the first of her people to play for the Belles since the return to international competition — in a way that the referee decides is worth a penalty) and, for Greerh, a yellow card). Lafayette, who still seems a bit shaken, cedes the shot to Swanson.. who sends the ball straight into O TrustyHand’s grasp.
After that, though, the Knights’ defence seems to find a rhythm and keeps the ball safely away from our girls… although that’s at the expense of no further counter-attacks for them, neither... right through until the last moment of added time. By that point the Belles have maybeso stopped expecting the Knights to try anything more, because somehow Sneijder and Swanson manage to repeat Sneijder & Lafayette’s moves from their only goal so far well enough to score — this time with O TrustyHand staying on her line, but fumbling the catch — again.
Final score, 4-2 in the Belles’ favour.
And so, as top in this group, the Belles head over to the ‘Miner’s Haven’[/b[] stadium at [b]Goldsan —the site of their first modern line-up’s 2nd 7 3rd group-stage games during DBC45 (lost to Cosumar, 2-3; beat Lochario, 3-1) for their ‘Round of Sixteen’ match… which is against?
(Haven’t got the Group ‘E’ final results yet…)(6)
OOC Footnotes
1. Most of my notes from those days were on a memory-stick that stopped working properly, and I haven’t been able to find the time for searching through all of the archived threads (if I could even find all of them, that is: Some were back on Jolt…) to re-collect them. As time has been re-set for the Bears, in between their earlier run of entries into international competition and this current run [DBC#45 onwards], blaming whatever caused that in this way seems the simplest solution both OOC and IC…
2. Presumption on my part, based on the fact that nothing’s been said to the contrary: Feel free to correct me, of course, if this is wrong.
3. Remember the standard Ursine system for measuring time? One day = sixteen ‘watches’ (so a football match’s 90 minutes of ‘normal time’, over both halves, coincidentally works out as one ‘watch’…), one ‘watch’ = sixty-four ‘moments’ (so one ‘moment’ is fractionally under 1.5 minutes), and one ‘moment’ = sixty-four ‘instants’.
4. This squad’s Chief Physiotherapist, replacing Krrystal Bruin who held that post during DBC45 & DBC46 but now works with the Belles’ senior team instead.
5. “Mu.U.NV.” = Marra Urrth’hrra Norr-Vurra, the Chief Coach for this version of the Belles. She is only very distantly related to their captain Beorrana Norr-Vurra [#5]>
6. Yes, I have… but Jammy hasn’t.