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On a frozen golden pond called Mahon, Coveside trotted out
their old bones to play their second-last game of
the season on jagged gravel against Rangers on Sunday morning. The game being far less important than the upcoming Canada-U.S. Olympic hockey final, it still held some importance to CUFC manager Bernie Ward, who got to the field early and buried an empty Molson Canadian can under the centre spot for good luck. The early hour and the cold weather had the Coveside
lads a bit sleepy. After their usual warmup,
consisting of standing in a circle and pulling their wires, the lads
started off a bit slow. The opposition was also not exactly running Coveside
ragged either. A former Division One powerhouse, age
and commitment had robbed the team of several key players from the year
before and as the team drops down to Division Two, they make no apologies
about the era they come from. This is all clearly evidenced the fact their
goalie wears legwarmers (all together now, "he's a maaaaniac, maaaniac on
the floor, and he's dancin' like he's never danced Having said that the Crockett-Tubbs combination up front caused Coveside no end of trouble as they bounced the ball around the Coveside box like the lone McDonald's french fry below the drivers seat in Bernie's pickup. Russ Hennessey was back in the lineup and did well getting his head on almost every ball around. Karim Ismail hit a tremendous corner to the far post finding a charging Rusty who got a solid piece of noggin on the ball but saw it sail over the bar. Al Roberts was sweeping up nicely in the back, and some
tenacious defending by Randy Ash kept the score at
nils going into the half. Buoyed by the late arrivals of Harp Dhaliwal and
Mark Docherty, as well as the return to the team of "The Geezer" Andy
Dudley, CUFC had started to Not long into the half, some solid work from Harpie down
the right side saw him play a brilliant ball back up
to his cousin, Randy Johal who had it teed up from about 25 yards out, but
just missed the sweet spot and send the ball hurtling wide.
About halfway through the second half, against the run of
play, Rangers got a break off a bounced cross that fell to a
seemingly-offside Sonny Crockett. The keeper hesitated (surprise,
surprise) was caught in no man's land and 2-0 and Coveside's thoughts turned to getting off the
field and in front of the tube for the gold medal
clash. Some good defending from Ed Duynstee kept the score at 2-0, which
enabled One more game, Tuesday against Lupo, and CUFC officially close the book on another successful season. On a side note, apparently a man with a large mullet and mustache was seen at Mahon later in the day with a metal detector digging up the empty can from under the centre spot.
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