The South Stand Report : Toronto v. Real Salt Lake... or failure by numbers (as in points and goals)

Congratulations! You've made it to the last home game of the year. Is it meaningful? Quite possibly.

As it turns out, this time around we are in a position to actually visit Mr. Post Season for once. There is still a chance that the whole thing will collapse around us as expected, but you can dream. You can hope.

Will some of the mysteries of strategy that has left the south stand scratching a hole in it's collective heads? Will Cummins finally wedge his head out of ass and make more than one useless substitution too late in the match become tactically astute in his choices resulting in some of the magical displays once witnessed at the infancy of his tenure?

Vegas odds has a reasonable line that Beckerman's dreads would win in a fight to Serioux's at an unlikely 17 to 1 longshot. Have you seen "The Predator"? He's that dangerous.

They're the Mormolacticos
~ Tony before kick-off

1' – Espinola gets the first break of the game, running down the left side and forcing Edwards to parry a shot over the bar

6 – O'Brien White bulled (can 'bull' be a verb? Screw it, it is now) his way into the box and his ensuing shot gets blocked, only for the Chad to overrun the loose ball.

11 – DeRo has a 20 yard go to introduce himself to the game.

18 – The Chad floats a nice little ball into the box only to see DeRo do a “dead salmon flop” looking move, fishing for the penalty. See what I did there... I made a salmon-fishing pun. Yeah, I'm clever.

19 – YELLOW – Brennan gets a booking for a supposed mistimed tackle which resulted in the dramatic fumbling and rolling from the victim for 6 or 7 revolutions.

21 – Hard work from White and a nice cross leaves Chad with a rudimentary half volley sent 12 yards over the bar hit from 6 yards out. Well played Barrett.

26 – Dom distracted me with accusations of environmental damage due to my discarding of loose papers from my notepad. Also Dom has declared that he was “feeling it”. I missed some offense. Way to go Dom.

30 – Guevara corner results in Gomez getting his head to the follow-up corner.

32 – Quick break to Brennan lays it to the Chad who rolls a very slow ball to Cronin who tries to rifle one to have it blocked. A little more pace Chad.

37 – Cronin volley ricochets off a defender and White's hustle ALMOST got to it before the keeper got his hands to it. For Christmas, I'm asking Santa for another step for the White.

39 – In what only can be described as 'bucking the trend', The Chad does something right and draws a yellow. The following free kick by DeRo bounces off the cross bar.

TFC is actually putting pressure on Real Salt Lake. It's as if they're trying. To win.

HALF-TIME : So close, yet so very very far.

48 – GOAL – The Chad's shot is blocked by the keeper however the rebound is slotted home by “Wee” Jimmy Brennan. Thank you football gods, wherever you may be.

50 – TFC are on the counter attack, Barrett lays off a pretty little ball for White who takes one touch too many, fires and has his attempt thwarted by the Salt Lake defender

65 – After a spell of RSL pressure, TFC is finally in the other half of the pitch and setting up shop. Hopefully, they have something to offer.

Much of the game at this point as been mostly one-way traffic for TFC. I don't believe it's the case where Toronto is playing exceptionally well rather Real Salt Lake is playing exceptionally poor. Beggars can't be choosers... we're still winning.

67 – The Chad nearly has a break, which to be honest frightened me a little, but a defender sweeps it away for a corner.

We, at the Yorkies, felt that the Chad had a rough first half. I mean utterly brutal. However, his second half has been very very good. He's making plays, he's aware of his surroundings, he's being a threat and a pest and we haven't seen him shank anything that didn't result in a change of possession. This IS what Barrett is good at. If he can be persuaded to take fewer shots, which will be difficult since he's usually in the best positions to shoot when he is being aggressive, and be a set-up man, I will firmly 'shut the hell up' about his bad play.

72 – Backup keeper Brian Williams Edwards [edited] is begging for a Man of the Match nod tonight with another key low-diving save on an awkward shot heading for the bottom right by pushing it around the post.

74 – SUB – The Chad out, Sanyang in.

76 – < run TORONTONACCIO.EXE... (oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t oh sh*t...)

80 – Espanola gets a break and fires a Chad-esque shot wide left from about 8 yards out. Talk about anxious...

83 – This should have been something special: DeRo breaks out, sweet ball over to Cronin, Cronin settles the ball and passes is back to DeRo but a deflection puts it on the foot of De Guzman who one-times wide right. It should have been something special... it was however typical.

84 – SUB – DeRo out, Fellinga in. Huh?

87 – Toronto are officially now playing 10 man behind the ball and 'not the fastest in the world' White is the lone striker. Nice tactics, idiot.

90 – SUB – White out, Gerba in. Since Torontonaccio traditionally begins at the 75th minute mark, might I make a suggestion to make this swap at the 74th minute?
4 minutes of extra time

90+2 – De Guzman turned some boor bastard right out of his boots and then negated it all by sending it to Gerba offside.

FULL TIME : Toronto 1 – Salt Lake 0

Man of the Match : We gave it to Gomez. Sure, we never said boo about him, but he did a wonderful job, great clean-up of mistakes and excellent tackling.

Goat of the Game : Aside from griping about tactics (or the lack thereof), no one worth bitching about for 90 mins.

Ref Meter : 4 out of 5. The yellow to Brennan was deemed a bit harsh, but he kept control, let the game flow and kept his whistle away as much as possible.

Man it was cold. We need a “Roof For BMO” campaign.

Otherwise, a team with the depth of talent on its books should be playing way better than this. I mean, way better. This team, on paper, is good enough to finish top 4 and feasibly win the league. But they don't. We speculate a lot of things, talk'em out. One of the notions that seems to come around is the question of DeRo's happiness. He plays with a great deal of skill, but his heart doesn't seem to be in it. That can stem from frustration with coaches, teammates, results, pressure on himself. The last 3 home games, the 'fire' that DeRo draws from has diminished to a flicker. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe he's hurt. Exhausted. I don't know. I'm concerned with him because I think the world of him. I even went as far as suggesting that we make DeRo our DP back in season one. I hope the fire can be stoked for New York. We need that guy to be there.

Plain DeRo, the guy we've seen the last few weeks, though still awesome, might not be awesome enough for what this team needs. It needs a special effort and I'd be shocked if it came from anyone else on the roster.

Anyways, that's my shtick for the season. Oh, I may do the New York game. And if there's playoffs, I'll be back.

While we're talking about fantasies, I would like to [deleted for inappropriate comments] while taking her [deleted for inappropriate comments] pound cake [deleted for inappropriate comments] unibrow [deleted for inappropriate comments] all the way to Tuscon, Arizona.