It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Doomed to Second Place
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Well, the promised comeback never materialized. And now the season is officially over.
We did our best. We fought as hard as we could. We came up short in the end, sadly.
Ilaoa & To’omata have officially clinched the season after 18 games played. They’ve collected 48 points against our 40.
We’re a cinch for second place, but there’s simply no way we can overcome them from here. Even if they lose their final two matches and we win both of ours, we’ll still be 2 points short.
It’s sad but true.
So Close, Yet So Far
The kicker for us was a 2-2 draw with Green Bay for our 18th match of the season.
We should have won. We’re a better team than they are, hands down. But we just couldn’t get it to work.
We had an xG of 3.20 to their 1.36. We dominated possession, winning about 60% of it. We’ve done a good job of slowing down our offense, holding on to the ball and looking for incisive shots rather than just lumping it forward and hoping for the best.
And we still couldn’t win.
I mean, a win against Green Bay wouldn’t have necessarily saved our season. This draw, though, is a good symbol for what our second season has been like. We’ve had a lot of good opportunities wind up wasted.
The Dagger
The worst part of it all came a few days ago.
Ilaoa & To’omata were on their way to a loss when we came up against Vaiala Tongan, a team that has been a real thorn in our side for my entire time at PanSa.
It was one of those matches where we dominated everything but the scoreline. We had 58% of the possession, completed 75% of our passes to their 64%, won 60% of the headers, and seemed to be in control.
However, none of our 9 shots were anywhere near the target. They won, 1-0, on a well-placed header by Sekone Vaiali’i on the counterattack.
It’s hard to blame the defense for giving up a single goal. And I just don’t understand where our supposedly excellent strikers have gone.
Just wait ‘till next year.