Happy Holidays!!

Have a great Holiday break guys and see you in the New Year!

Season Statistics!

Well the season is now a distant memory, especially after all the beers that were drunk, but I thought it would be worthwhile doing a brief summary of the key season stats!

Final league Position;

.........................PL.W..D..L..GF.GA.GD..PTS

1st Orange ........28.21..4...3..89..38..51...67

2nd Guilford .....28.17..4..7...56..29..27...55

3rd Madison .....28.14.10..4..74..50..24...52

4th Eagles..........28.15..5..8..95..70..25...50

Orange deserved to win the championship as they were by far the strongest team throughout the season. We gave a good account of ourselves in our first two games against them winning one and drawing the other but the two games after that were comprehensive defeats. Congratulations to them and I'm sure they will do well in Div 2. Second went to Guilford and oh my we had so many chances to be the team in that position and not them. The stats show that our Achilles heal was drawing too many games. If we had turned two of those ten tied games into wins we would have easily been second. Of course the other easy way was to beat Guilford! We managed it only once through the season so again even though its painful to say it they deserved to go up in stead of us. As for the Albanian Eagles, well they finished the season powerfully ending up only two points behind us. They were the top goal scorers in the league with an amazing 95 goals but what a terrible defence they have.! They let in 70 and if they get their defence sorted out they will be the major force in the league next season. We manged to tie them in all four games! In some of those games we were goals ahead of them and let them back in....it's those type of games like the lost points against Morelia that cost us promotion.

We took all 12 points off of East Haven, 10 off of Hamden and North Branford, 8 from Morelia but we managed to capture only 4 of the available 12 points off of Orange, Guilford and the Eagles.

All in all it was a good start in a new league but we have to up our game for season 2012!

Individual stats;

Tano had a great season ending up the top goalscorer with 20 goals, winning forward of the year and winning the most man of the match awards (5) during the season! Carlos and Jorge contributed another 20 goals between them. Roniildo was the top goal scoring midfielder with 8, mostly from the penalty box but they all count, and he sure knows how to take penalty's! Roniildo also won the midfielder of the year award. The midfield quartet of Roniildo, David, Halil and Ruggerho scored 22 goals between them during the season!

As for the defence it was a bit of a rough season after the near perfect last season in the CARSL.

50 goals lost at the back, some in point losing mode. We managed 8 "clean sheet" games all season but in 14 games we let in 2 or more goals. We averaged 1.8 goals let in per game against an average of 2.6 goals scored. Our biggest defeat was away to Orange ( 6-2 ), our biggest win was at home to East Haven ( 5-0 ). You could argue our best win was the first of the season away to Orange (3-2 ). having said that the defence had some great games and through the season Jodingo!! was a revelation as a fast moving center back. No surprise he won best defender of the season. TomA also came into defence after a long term injury and played incredibly well at right back. The Hulk and stand in goalie El Gato also won us many points by making some really crucial saves when we needed them. If we can tighten up a bit more at the back we will have an even stronger season next year.

We had a great year, with some super football and great fun with a super bunch of guys....let's do it all again next year!!

Atlantic Rovers Tour 2011 (Part 4!)

The final stage of the Atlantic Rovers Tour started with our trip around Celtic Park so El Gato could do some shopping. As you can tell from the photo above he was a bit excited to be in such a big Celtic shop as he gets most of his Celtic gear over the Internet! After buying up the shop we said bye bye to El Gato as he headed off to London and the rest of the boys went off to plan for a day trip to Edinburgh. We took the train in the next day for a nice journey around bars, castles and steep hills! The best part of that day ( apart from the beer...) was Jodingo!! getting insulted by a girl serving him coffee at the train station. Made me smile..... Our train got us back to Glasgow just in time to head to a famous city center bar to watch Champions league football. We then said bye bye to BOR as he headed back to Texas and now there were only three of us! The next night Jodingo!! and I played in another 7 a side soccer game and all I remember is that Jodingo!!'s team lost.

The next night we rounded off the tour with a trip to watch Celtic play in the Europa Cup against the Italian team Udinese. It was a good game that Celtic deserved to win ( I'm not biased....) but were held to a 1-1 tie. Another few beers to round off the night and another tour for the Atlantic Rovers was successfully concluded! The third tour will likely be that last weekend in September 2012....start saving now!!