Sunday, Oct. 02, 2011

No goals, no luck for Enloe, Leesville Road

The match consisted of 100 minutes of physical, often quite chippy play, accompanied by some on-field chirping between players.

There were plenty of spills, free kicks, bumps, bruises and unlucky breaks on shots Wednesday night between Enloe and Leesville Road.

Just no goals.

The Eagles and Pride played scoreless through 80 minutes of regulation and two 10-minute overtimes, neither team willing to concede a point yet neither team fortunate enough to catch a fortunate bounce, leaving host Enloe and Leesville Road deadlocked at 0-0 at the end of the match.

"That was a pretty exciting 0-0 game," Leesville coach Paul Dinkenor said. "I thought they played like warriors. I thought they played really hard."

The scoreboard may have flashed 0-0, but it wasn't as if the Eagles (9-3-1 overall, 4-2-1 Cap 8) and Pride (9-2-2, 5-1-2) didn't have chances to score.

Both teams had scoring opportunities. Enloe coach Drew Womble said the Eagles had 17 shots on goal, with the Pride at 10.

But arguably the closest shots - therefore, the narrowest and most gut-wrenching near-misses for the Pride and Eagles - came in the two overtime periods.

Even in the final seconds, Enloe had a chance to score, but Jason Wood's shot fell short with 17 seconds left following a near-miss from Louis Downham, whose shot from the left side of the pitch slid just a bit wide of the far post.

It was a similar story in the first overtime, with both teams getting a few ever-so-close scoring chances that barely missed.

For Enloe, C.J. Moser's header off a corner kick in the waning seconds of the first overtime period was narrowly caught by the outstretched limbs of the Leesville goalkeeper. That followed another header from Moser a few moments earlier that was also just short.

"Talk about unlucky," Womble said, saying the same of the Pride's near-misses. "They were too, though."