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Men still stuck in neutral

The Mustangs men’s soccer team just can’t seem to catch a break. After defeating Brock 2-1 on Saturday, the Mustangs went into Sunday’s game against McMaster with high hopes.
Unfortunately, the men emerged on the wrong side of a 1-0 defeat to the sixth place Marauders at TD Waterhouse.
“We dominated the game, we had most of the possession. They had one opportunity and scored one goal and we just weren’t able to get one in,” Mustang assistant coach Paco Barnett said.
“We would like to be doing better, obviously. We feel we have a strong group [and] if we can just get all the cylinder’s firing we can compete with the best teams in the country.”
The Mustangs had most of the possession and dictated the play for the first half of the game. The Marauders, on the other hand, played defensively, mustering few chances on the counter-attack.
“We need to take more shots, we didn’t take enough shots,” Barnett said.
Once the second half started, the Marauders played more offensively, sharing the possession with Western equally.
In the 81st minute, McMaster finally managed to break the scoring drought and tally the winner. A corner kick into Western’s box took a few unlucky bounces before sitting perfectly for striker Pat Stewart, who knocked the ball past Mustang keeper Kosta Viglatzis.
The goal forced Western to push forward. The Mustang offence created several opportunities to score but McMaster’s back line held strong.
Marauder Anthony Costa noted his team has not been having the best season but played well enough to compete.
“It’s been more of a season based on luck than anything,” he said. “However, they started thinking they could take advantage of opportunities and we defended well.”
McMaster head coach Dino Perri agreed with his captain.
“Anybody can beat anybody on any given night,” he added.
However, he felt that had the Mustangs capitalized on their scoring chances, the game could have ended very differently.
“They could have easily been ahead two or three nothing on us,” Perri said. “But it’s one of those games where it’s very difficult to score and when you get the opportunity you have to make the most of it.”
Although the Mustangs have been working hard in practice, their efforts haven’t translated over to success in games. Despite losing three of their last four, fifth-year defender Mark Bennett believes the Mustangs will pick up their game.
“Western is known for having a strong team. We go into the season with high hopes, thinking [of] ourselves as one of the front-runners in the league. It has definitely been disappointing thus far,” he said.
“We know we have the players to win, so we’re staying optimistic but it is frustrating losing games. We are not in that bad of a situation. We know we are one of the strong teams.”
For the rest of the season, coach Barnett feels his team needs to improve on their team play and intensity.
“We’ve got to get up with our technique but also emotionally. We’ve got to get fired up and play harder in the game,” he said. “Everyone is revving to play Western. If you don’t match that intensity, then this is what is going to happen.”
The Mustangs sit in fifth place in the Ontario University Athletics West division with seven points. They travel to Waterloo this weekend to take on the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks and the Waterloo Warriors.

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