By Caio Miari
Soccer is a sport in which no matter what happens during the 90 minutes of action, the winning team will be the one who capitalizes its chances the most. And as obvious as it might sound, the Centennial Colts women’s soccer team experienced that in the 2-1 loss against the St. Lawrence College Vikings on Saturday afternoon.
The Colts (2-4-0) had the best chances, creating at least two clear opportunities to score with a tie game, but failed to capitalize on it.
“We deserved at least a draw today,” said head coach Diarmuid O’Connor, after the match. “I thought we fought well. We just didn’t get the break. In soccer, that’s what happens: sometimes you get the break, sometimes you don’t.”
Nailah Rowe and Isabelle dos Anjos were responsible for two great, although short, chances in the game. While Rowe had a one-on-one opportunity against the goalkeeper that stopped in the crossbar early in the first half, Isabelle missed a wide-open header with the game tied at one after halftime.
“She will be thinking about that tonight, I’m sure," said the coach, about Isabelle's missed header.
The first-year forward agrees with this matchup mindset.
“We had more chances than they had,” said Isabelle. “Unfortunately, we lost (because of) small details.”
The Brazilian started the match as a striker, alongside Rowe in the team’s highest line. After halftime, though, coach O’Connor made some changes on his offence, and he liked what he saw.
“I thought she (Isabelle) played an excellent second half. She got into the game a lot more,” he said. “We started her up top today, and then the second half we had her playing more in the middle, and I thought she settle us up for a lot of chances.”
Once again, most of the Colts’ chances came from Rowe. The Ajax, Ont., native scored her ninth goal of the season — most in the OCAA thus far — after a line-breaking pass by Tasia Martin in the 41st minute.
But Rowe’s goal only tied the match for the Colts, who were down due to Cassandra Almeida’s free-kick goal after only 14 minutes played.
The Vikings (4-1-1) would then scored the go-ahead, winning goal at 76’ in a solid play between Melissa Gilligan and Madison Poole that ended up into the net after a strong finish by Gilligan.
For the second consecutive match, Rowe saw her team struggling to connect midfield-to-attack passes throughout the entire game.
But that wasn’t the only thing that the superstar pointed out.
“I feel that collectively we allowed the other team to get into our heads,” she said. “Some of us put our heads down for a split second, others — myself — got a little bit more aggressive, maybe more than we should have.”
Rowe received her second yellow card of the tournament in the final minutes of the game. Another card means that she will have to sit out for a match serving a suspension.
“Failing to connect on passes and allowing the other team to get into our heads I feel is something that we need to get better,” Rowe said.
The Colts will try to get back to the win column with their third straight home game, this time against the Durham Lords on October 4.