Victoria 5 City 1
To play at the upper echelon of the Alberta Major Women’s Soccer League Red Deer City needs to eventually reach the level of teams like Edmonton Victoria.
But the Red Deer crew needs some time to reach that level, which was evident Friday as Red Deer dropped a 5-1 decision to Victoria at Great Chief Park.
“In my mind Victoria is by far and away the top team in this league,” said Red Deer head coach David McCarthy. “They have a number of top players and two or three quality players at every position. It just shows our players the standard we need to get to.”
But McCarthy doesn’t expect his squad to reach that level over night.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he said. “That’s where we need to get to, but not by 2 p.m. tomorrow. But if we develop the right kind of program we’ll certainly be in there one day.”
Red Deer, who hasn’t played for close to two weeks, weren’t ready for the first half and trailed 4-0 at the break.
“To play a top team in this league you sometimes have to take a step back before you take a step ahead and we took a step back in the first half,” said McCarthy. “We had a talk with the girls at half time and told them to try to win the second half and after a poor first half we competed fairly well in the second. We were a bit unlucky that a couple of calls in certain situations didn’t go our way or we would have fulfilled that objective.”
As it was RDC (Red Deer City) tied the second half when Claire Wallace scored.
“We played the second half with more unity and more cohesion,” continued McCarthy. “The players played without fear in the second half, worked hard and in some ways got their just reward.”
Despite allowing five goals RDC netminder Lauren Good was outstanding with several excellent saves.
RDC, who lost for the first time after a pair of ties to open the season, returns to action today at 2 p.m. against Lethbridge at Great Chief Park. The game is the feature game in soccer day in Red Deer, which sees teams from the Red Deer United and Renegades clubs playing in a number of matches. They begin at 9 a.m. with the final contest at 4 p.m.
Red Deer should be right with Lethbridge, 1-2, who is one point ahead of RDC in the standings. Victoria leads at 6-0.
But McCarthy isn’t taking anything for granted.
“If history tells us anything it’s not to look to positive on any team we play,” he said.
“In reality we should compete more than we did tonight, but it’s a matter of the players fulfilling our game plan and doing what we ask for them.”
drode@www.reddeeradvocate.com