Dal Men win, more info on Thursday

At least one Tiger team will finish as high as sixth place. The men won their consolation match today against Victoria to go on to the fifth place game. The game was scoreless until penalties, which I have no idea who scored, as they haven't been posted.

One thing that has been posted is the highlights pack for the Dal v. Victoria women's game. You can see it all for yourself at www.ssncanada.ca. It's probably better that way, since my attempts at describing the play of Dal 'keeper Heather Armstrong can't come close to actually seeing it.

I don't want to suggest--not for a minute--that Armstrong had much help. 24 shots is too many shots to give up in any game. Watching the highlights, though, I can't help but notice that a lot of those shots weren't exactly great efforts.

To be honest, I suspect Armstrong is still hurt. She picked up an injury a few weeks ago, and I cannot understand how she had so much difficulty with these goals.

The first goal from Kendra Flock, ten minutes in, bounced straight past Armstrong and in. Judging from the not so great angle on the replay, it's probably about 20 to 25 yards out. It bounced once in front of Armstrong and that probably fooled her, the surface was very, very wet, and reacting to a bounce like that would have been hard. Still, she should have stayed on her feet there and just gotten the body behind it.

Victoria's second, just before half-time was the killer. To be fair, Janelle Smith hit a very, very good shot--a perfect chip which would have tested Armstrong at the best of times. She's stopped plenty of those, though, and I've seen her do it. She's good in the air for her size, but didn't give herself a chance to be here, given she was 16 yards out of goal and off to the side when the shot went over her. The ball was never available to be claimed, and her decision to come for it can only be called a bit suspect.

The third goal was truly unstoppable, a blast from Moira Hood that dipped just below the bar. Armstrong did well to get up to it, but couldn't quite get fingers to it. Which doesn't absolve the Tigers right back, whose number I cannot see on the video. She should have closed down Hood a lot faster, and gave a talented player way too much space to launch one.

By the fourth, it looked very much as though Dal had given up. Leigh Quinlan broke in on Armstrong--no sign of Alannah MacLean--and managed to hustle the ball around her. Armstrong got down and got a hand in on Quinlan, but couldn't hang on to it, and Quinlan rolled it into an empty goal.

The field was sodden, the ball slick, and the tension high for Dal--one could absolve them of some blame for that. But the fact still remains that this has to be one of the worst performances I've seen this year from Dal. In order to win at the CIS level, one has to be able to deal with rain and tension, among other things.

In the end, maybe it was better we didn't see it live.