April 29, 2018 League 1 Ontario--Alliance United vs North Mississauga Panthers (by Rocket Robin)

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Result and details of the Sunday April 29, 2018 League 1 Ontario game between Alliance United
and North Mississauga Panthers SC played at Centennial Stadium in Scarborough at 6:30pm.

31 min...NMP Triston Watson GOAL...An NMP player makes a check on the center line on the left stripping
the ball and rolls a pass forward for NMP Darren Chambers at 30 yards in the middle. He waits for the ball
to reach him and taps the ball forward for Watson who splits three defenders at 25 yards receiving the ball
on the edge of the box and beating charging goalie Mark Rogal and rounds him on the right and rolls 9 yarder
from the right to the left side of the open net.

Final Score:...Alliance United........0........North Mississauga Panthers......1.......

Attendance was about 40 on this cold and windy evening with a bitter gusty wind from the north west ruining
the game and a blinding setting sun also in the north west. I was glad for the end of the first half
so I could get a pair of mittens out of my car.

I was talking with one of the soccer dads before the game and we agreed that whoever had the wind at their
backs was going to be at a huge advantage. The surprise was that the goal was scored into the wind
(although kept on the ground) and Alliance had good pressure late in the game with half a dozen chances
to tie the game but shots were just off target from short range. With the wind at their backs both teams
had problems with goal kicks flying right to the goalie in the south net, chipped up passes drifting offside,
and a the best example a cross from near the cornerflag that not only drifted behind the net but all
the way over the back fence.

Andrew D'Sousa earned the shutout for the Panthers. He had a strong game with a key sprawling point blank
foot save at 68 minutes from only 8 yards out and caught a break in injury time with two more chances
missing on poor shots.

Rogal had a great save at 81 minutes to keep Alliance in the game with a flying save to push Marko Bedenikovic's
25 yard freekick up the middle wide right of the post.

This stadium has new field turf. When I was scouting for which campus the sports field was at (the college has
four campuses around Toronto), I couldn't find it on Google Maps from the sky as it was just an undeveloped field
two years ago. It's on the Progress Avenue campus if you're interested in taking in a game. The field is close
to one of the widest stretches of the 401—something like 16 lanes wide in this stretch of Scarborough. I'll try
to get here on a hot, muggy night in August and smell if the exhaust from the highway effects people breathing.
Four small aluminum stands split up on the west side of the field which may hold about 120 at most. The wind was
so strong it was just seconds away from blowing my gamesheets from the afternoon game out of bag until I hung
it up on the standard schoolyard wire fence.

Change rooms were inside one of the college buildings. The hallways are wide enough but the last bit where both
dressing rooms are beside each other with all the cleaning carts and catering trays narrowing the passageway
considerably it could be another BMO Stadium tunnel incident if the teams hated each other.

This was the first ever game for Alliance United—a partnership between the Markham SC of Markham, Wexford SC
of Scarborough, and Centennial College itself. I think this is good way for smaller clubs to have an end goal
for their players to advance through their own system and share in the expenses of running a team in the
League 1 Ontario level. Darby FC is another L1O team that is operating by two local youth systems.

Orange and black appear to be the Alliance team colours.

Ilya Orlov is the coach and I've found some my old game reports of him as a players since 2009 with Italia Shooters
and SC Toronto back to 2011 in the CSL and in L1O in 2014, the league's first year, with Vaughan Azzurri in 2014
through to him being an assistant coach with North Toronto Nitros just last season (a L1O team that has not returned
for 2018). There are certainly many on the Alliance roster who have played for Nitros in the last two years.
I counted eight including goalie Mark Rogal who started years ago with the TFC Academy. Jacob Maurutto-Robinson
was with TFC III last year. Connor McFall was with FC London in their PDL league days. Ruben Dos Santos was with
Aurora FC last year.

I had a driving adventure getting here after leaving the BMO Training Ground where in the afternoon I watched
the TFC III vs FC London game. The Allan Expressway was closed for maintenance which I didn't know beforehand
and that cut me off from the 401 because of the resulting traffic. I wanted to avoid Yonge Street as they
were holding a memorial today for the victims of the truck attack which killed ten people so drove to the
north border of the city and cut across at that point. I live within two blocks of Yonge Street and the
incident really shook me up. I had just returned home from my volunteer work at Sunnybrook hospital which
ended up being the crisis centre for all the wounded. The next few days I saw the memorials that sprang
up on Yonge and walked down the street to double check on a theory I had after hearing that the attacker
drove down the sidewalk in part of his rampage. There a lot of huge concrete planters and any one of them
would have stopped the truck if hit. They were all placed right out at the curb but wide enough that
a truck could be driven fairly easily between the planters and the side of the building. If the planters
were staggered like a 5-6 formation instead of 11-0 (neither a good soccer formation) it may have prevented
some deaths. I liken it to the 'dragon's teeth' defensive system that the Allies had to get by on the beaches
of Normandy in WWII. I'm not sure why I had this idea within five minutes of hearing of the tragedy—all the
memorabilia at the Veteran's wing of Sunnybrook, my late father's war recollections, or playing with my toy
soldiers in the sandbox with a childhood friend who e-mailed me within days of hearing the news. I sent
an e-mail with a brief outline about the planter formation idea to my local councillor and the mayor and
will make sure to deliver a copy to the local police station.

Rocket Robin
robing@eol.ca
twitter @RocketRobin01

Alliance United starters