Matthew Danaher

After The Game Is Before The Game

11/28/2011

I don’t really know how to close out my final blog. As a team this season, we accomplished nearly everything we possibly could’ve.

13 games unbeaten
11-0-1 in the MAAC
MAAC Regular season champions
MAAC Tournament Champions
And we were 9 minutes away from defeating Brown in the NCAA Tournament.

I’m not going to write on the loss to Brown because it wasn’t a fair reflection of how our season had gone up to that point. Looking back to that first day of preseason on August 14th, its incredible how much we’ve grown as a group and as individual players. If you had told me back when we were 0-4 and after a 4-1 thrashing at the hands of Stony Brook that we would go on to win 12 of our next 13 games and win the MAAC Tournament in Disney, I think everyone on our team would’ve laughed. Deep down I think we all knew that we could do it, but I don’t think anyone believed it until it actually started happening.

While playing away at Loyola in our first MAAC game, Coach Rees told us that we were going to go 12-0-0 for the rest of the season, starting that night. And with the exception of one tie, he got it exactly right. Shockingly, my mom made that exact same prediction. She told me after we were 4-4 that she had a dream that we weren’t going to lose for the rest of the season. Thanks for the belief mom!

The bar has now been set for Fairfield soccer. As good as this year was, we want to do even better next year. Making the NCAA Tournament was the goal this year, now the goal is to go as deep as we can in the tournament and put Fairfield on the map. After spending most of this season playing 20 minutes a game and coming off the bench, it’s a personal goal for me to do it all again, except this time as a starter. Our coaches always say, “After the game is before the game”, and now this time period of winter-spring is the time before the next important game. Now’s when I need to work on my technique through indoor and any extra training I can get in with my teammates.

I’m really going to miss this group of guys, especially the grad. students and seniors who won’t be back next year. I’m going to especially miss Brendon and Keaton Cristobal, who I trained with all summer in order to accomplish this goal of finally getting championship rings.

Before I end this blog, there are a few people I want to thank. The first are my parents for always believing in me. They were the first people I ran over and hugged after the final whistle had blown against Manhattan. I wouldn’t be here writing this blog without their belief in me and their support. I also want to thank Tiff Weimer, who always volunteers her time to train me extra if I’m going through a rough patch, and has always pushed me to become a better player. Lastly, I want to thank the coaches at Fairfield. It sounds stupid, but anytime I don’t agree with something in practice or in a game, I always remember that Fairfield took a chance on me when no other school would, and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that. God Bless, and see you next fall.

PS. Play some indoor over the winter, I used to hate it and now I can’t get enough!

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We Are Winning, But I Want More

10/28/2011

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It’s been an unbelievable run these last few weeks. 8 games unbeaten, and 2 points away from our first regular season title since 2006. It’s awesome how well the team is doing, but at the same time it’s a different feeling when you win and don’t contribute to the result. Last season, I only played in two games as a freshman. After the season, I promised myself I would work as hard and play as much as I could in the winter, spring, and summer so that I wouldn’t find myself in that same situation, and yet I find myself here again.

In our 1-0 win over Iona, I didn’t get a chance to see the field. To be fair, if I was the coach I wouldn’t of made any changes to the lineup either. We played one of the best games of our season, had at least 70% of the possession, and did not concede a shot to #19 Iona in the first half. After Jon Clements scored the winner in overtime and the fans and our bench dog piled on top of him, I couldn’t enjoy the win as much as I wanted to. I was happy we won, don’t get me wrong, but I felt empty, that somehow, somewhere I could have contributed to our win, even if it meant only 2 minutes on the pitch. I guess that’s a normal feeling, because if you were happy about not playing, then why would you even bother to put on your kit? At the end of our games, we always lay our kits out on the floor to get washed for the next game, and there’s nothing worse then placing your jersey down and it’s still perfectly white.

One of my good friends, Keaton Cristobal, a graduate student at Fairfield this fall, has been one of our best players. At the start of the season against Boston College, he was playing left back and I was playing right back, a position I’m really comfortable in. When coach decided to play Keaton on his dominate right foot, it meant that any time I would get would come in the form of coming off the bench to play right midfield, a position I’ve played before, but have never felt at home at. Coming off the bench is a lot harder then starting the game; you get a very short leash in terms of how you play. If you don’t come into the game and play well, you could very quickly be back on the bench, never to return to the game. You also don’t get any real time to adjust to the speed of the game, you have to be ready to go the instant you cross the white line.

It’s also hard to break into the lineup when your team keeps winning. The coach doesn’t want to change the lineup because if its been working, there’s no reason to fix it. I know I can speak for anyone who has been in this position; this reality makes it hard to stay motivated in practice and put in the hard work, the extra sprints, etc that normally would be second nature. In the back of your mind, you’re thinking that even if I do play really well in this practice, I’ll never be able to break into the starting 11 this late in the season.

I decided that if I’m going to get on the field and contribute I’m going to have to work extra during the week when I’m not in class. I called up one of my closest friends Tiffany Weimer to see if she would be able to work with me on my technical ability. Regardless of whether I’m playing in games or not, I need to still strive to become a better player. I know I can still improve, and I want to see how far soccer can take me. I refuse to accept being average because I know if I did that would be an insult to everyone who has believed in me and helped me get to this point.

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On Any Given Day

10/18/2011

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“Either we heal now as a team, or we will die as individuals.” – Al Pacino 'Any Given Sunday'

Every game has a storyline, and so does every season. Last year, our season’s story was one of last minute losses and poor refereeing decisions that caused us to miss the MAAC Tournament. But this year, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, our team has gone on an extraordinary run these past four weeks, going from winless in our first four games, to a current streak of 6-0-1 and the top of the MAAC. If anyone was to ask us what changed that caused us to start winning, I don’t think any of us could give a distinct reason for our new found success. We just continued to work hard and knew if we did the little things right, the wins would start coming sooner or later. The most important thing was that we stayed together as a team. No one pointed fingers at anyone else, and everyone knew that if we were going to save this season, we were going to have to do it together.

I have to credit our team for our attitude, because it’s easy to turn up to training when everything is going smoothly. It takes an entirely different mentality to come to training knowing that your going to be run into the ground, or that all your hard work during the week might not translate into a win on the weekend. At the time, it felt like everyone at our school had written us off already, thinking that this was the same team that failed last year. We weren’t proud to say that we were a part of Fairfield Men’s soccer, because for the past 24 months, everyone associated our team as being major underachievers.

Since those first four games, it’s been an unbelievably wild ride. 3 of our 6 results in the MAAC have come from games where we were trailing by a goal with under a minute to go in the second half. Unlike last season when we would concede a goal and think the game was lost, we’ve shown tremendous resiliency in the last ten minutes of games. We know the game is never over until that whistle finally blows. Its as if we became so sick of losing at the start of the year that now we refuse to accept defeat anymore. En route to our current 6-4-1 record, I played against two of my former teammates, Mike Matera on Siena and Fred Osborne on Marist.

I knew Fred and Mike from club soccer, but both played at Trumbull High School, my high school’s rival. I’d never had opportunity to beat either of them during high school play, but during my sophomore year we had tied 1-1 in a match that my high school probably should have won. Three years later, I finally got the chance to beat them both, knocking off Siena 1-0 and then Marist 2-1. This was a personally satisfying moment for me. I felt like I had finally gotten the “monkey off my back” so to speak.

I wanted to close this blog with a quote from the movie “Any Given Sunday” because that’s what the MAAC has become this year. On any given day, any team can beat any other team, it simply comes down to which collective group of players wants it more. Manhattan College snapped its 43 game losing streak last Friday by beating Canisius and then proceeded to beat Niagra two days later. Because Iona, #16 in the country, lost to Siena on Sunday, we assumed sole possession of first place in the MAAC. We play Iona at home on Saturday night at 7, and we know that in order to stay at the top, it’s going to come down to how much energy and passion we bring to the pitch.

“We are in hell right now gentlemen, believe me, and we can stay here and get the sh*t kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football… When we add up all those inches that's going to make the difference between WINNING and LOSING! Between LIVING and DYING!”

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The Power of Winning

10/6/2011

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On the bus ride back from Rider, I realized how powerful the game of football really is. We had just beaten our rival Loyola 2-1 at their brand new stadium, and now we were driving back from an overtime thriller against Rider, a game in which we trailed 2-1 with under a minute to go. After playing the majority of the game, I came off with five minutes left, thinking the game was over. My first thought on the bench was how terrible the bus ride back would be after a loss like this. We had gone 1-0-0 in our conference with the win at Loyola, and this loss was going to set us back to where we started. I was still shouting encouragement to my team, but my mind had already given Rider the win.

Then, with 55 seconds left, Ryan Perkins, a freshman who had been subbed on in replace of me, brought down a ball on the corner of the 18 yard box. With great composure, he played a ball across the box to Jack Burridge, who turned instantly on his left foot and put in a low driven shot into the bottom corner to tie the game at 2. Last year, we would be on the other end of this type of comeback. I remember last season we conceded a goal to Rhode Island when their goalkeeper came up for a corner and toe poked the ball into the net with 10 seconds left. I remember how down we felt after that moment and I knew Rider must be feeling that exact same way. Rider thought the game was over, and I knew we weren’t going to be denied the three points now.

Sure enough, we found the winner with three minutes left in the first overtime when Jack Burridge slipped Jon Clements in behind the back four with the outside of his right foot. Clem played in a cross that was deflected back at him, and with his second try put the ball right onto the head of Dan Shaw who flicked it passed the Rider goalkeeper.

Its amazing how powerful winning is, it really does make everything better. I’ve always had this idea that it’s important to keep the three S’s (School, soccer, social) in balance, and if one of these areas is lacking, the others suffer too. When I wasn’t playing because of my bad ankle, I was less enthusiastic about my schoolwork, even though I had more time and I wasn’t tired from training. It was such a relief to play most of the game against Rider, and even better to end the weekend with six points and at the top of the MAAC conference. After starting the year 0-4, it’s the best feeling ever to win 3 straight and no longer have the cloud of losing hanging over your head. One of my friends made the comment, “Wow! Why can’t we just win all the time. This is great!” It’s moments like these that keep me coming back to the game of football – it can be gut wrenching, and glorious, and the beauty is you never really know which one its going to be!

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Rather Be Playing Than Injured

9/30/2011

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Apologies for the long break in between blogs, I’ve been out injured for the past two weeks and since I haven’t been playing I haven’t had too much to write about. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about being injured, it’s that you don’t appreciate how much you love the game until you’re forced to watch. Worse than just watching is seeing your team lose and knowing that there’s nothing you can do to help.

We’ve played three tough games since my last entry, the first being against Northeastern, a very good team, similar to Boston College. In the first twenty minutes, we came out with a lot of energy and created numerous opportunities in front of goal. Within the first thirty seconds, one of our forwards went through in on goal, only to have his legs taken out by the central defender. The referee waved to our forward Jordan to get up, ignoring the shouts from our bench for a penalty. I thought to myself maybe the referee didn’t have the guts to give a penalty in the first minute, but I changed my theory by the end of the game.

Having missed numerous chances to put Northeastern on the back foot, I began to wonder if these chances would come back to haunt us at the end of the game. Northeastern began to settle into the game and soon started exposing our right flank with some explosive runs by their left winger. Our goalkeeper, Michael O’Keeffe, made a few key saves to keep the game 0-0 at halftime.

Northeastern’s best player, Dante, a player who looks like he belongs in middle school and not on the football pitch, began to get on the ball. In the first half he had trouble finding the game and this is really why we controlled most of the first half. But as we began to tire and more space was created, Dante began to take control of the game. Northeastern broke the deadlock with a free kick that fell to the top of the eighteen and was volleyed in off the post. About ten minutes later, Dante got on the ball and went on a magical Messi-like run, skinning three of our players before laying the ball in to the forward for an easy finish.

At this point it seemed the game had slipped away from us, but with 8 minutes to go in the game, Jordan Arryis got on the end of a long ball over the top and tucked it away in the corner, giving us a lifeline. We began to push for an equalizer, knowing that time was against us. With a minute to go, our forward Jack Burridge broke free of the Northeastern backline and went in one on one with the goalkeeper. As he touched the ball past him, the keeper dove and took out both of his legs, missing the ball completely. Our bench erupted. We could not believe that the referee had missed both the penalty in the first minute and now in the last minute. We felt cheated, upset, and we felt that we had done enough to merit at least a draw from the game, and instead we left Boston empty handed.

The following week we took on Stony Brook and Yale, neither of which I could play in. It was rough watching us go up a goal early on an amazing free kick from Jon Clements, and then go on to lose 4-1. But our team responded very well that Friday against Yale in New Haven. We were much more compact and organized, and we defended well as a team. It was impressive that we did not concede a goal against a team that scored 7 against Marist a few days before.

It was a great feeling to get our first win of the season, but now we’re focused on playing our rival Loyola in Baltimore on Friday night. I’ve finally gotten back into training and my ankle is feeling much better, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to contribute in some way against the Greyhounds.

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Playing Against an Old Friend & a Motivational Reminder

9/14/2011

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Following our tough loss at Boston College, we prepared to take on Columbia at home on Friday night. Playing against Columbia was going to be really meaningful for me. One of my good friends Kofi Agyapong had just transferred to Columbia from Wake Forest. I had played with Kofi since he came over to America from Ghana when he was 16 for Connecticut ODP and briefly at the club level. We had grown to be really good friends, always in contact with each other to see how the other was playing, even if we were on opposite sides of the country.

This game was also important to me because of Kevin Anderson, the head coach of Columbia. When I was a junior in high school, Coach Anderson was the assistant coach at Boston College. He was my coach for one of the prospective college camps I went to during that summer. At the end of the camp, Coach Anderson gave myself and all the other players an evaluation of our ability. That evaluation still hangs on my wall, where he had circled Division 3 substitute as the level he thought I was best suited to play at.

Even though I had started games in the spring and played 70+ minutes against Boston College, this was going to be the first game I’d ever started for Fairfield U. It was a perfect evening for a game, with a slight breeze and a clear sky. Although school had been pushed back until the next week because of Hurricane Irene, there was still a decent crowd of supporters at the match. We started off jittery, not calm and composed as we had against Boston College. I don’t know if it was because we were nervous playing at home for the first time, or if we just weren’t prepared for the game. Columbia pressed us really high up the pitch and didn’t allow us to build out of the back at all. Their best chance to score came when a pass between our two center backs was intercepted and then eventually cleared off the line by Jonny Raj. We still managed to string together a handful of passes and could have gone up 1-0 off a corner, but a Columbia player cleared the ball off the line.

Kofi was playing up top as a forward, but was frequently dropping into the midfield to find the ball. Because I had played with him for such a long time, I knew everything that he was going to try to do. He loves to nutmeg players and cut past them once they’ve dived in to win the ball. He would find the ball in the center of the park, wait for one of our aggressive players to dive in, and then cut past him and run at our back four. Although Kofi was quite effective at this, Columbia did not really have a clear-cut opportunity to score, other then the ball that was cleared off the line. Then around the 25th minute, Columbia found the back of the net after a corner that was cleared straight to one of their players at the top of the box. The striker took a touch and shot it off of the leg of our center back and into the penalty spot. The Columbia attacking midfielder found it and coolly slotted it in off the inside of the post. Now we had to chase the game.

Unlike Boston College when we went down a goal and responded with an equalizer, I think we panicked from the pressure of knowing we were expected to win at home. We suddenly forgot to play to feet and began to play everything over the top. With the slick grass, all these passes went straight to the Columbia goalkeeper. For the rest of the game, we struggled to create any chances except from corners. Columbia came in with a solid game plan and executed it well. We never really did enough to say we deserved to win the game.

Our team is currently getting ready to play Northeastern on Saturday night. We missed two games this past weekend against Hartwick and Robert Morris due to severe rain in New York, so it will have been two weeks since our last game. Hopefully we are able to go up to Boston and this time come back with a good result.

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First Game in the Books

8/31/2011

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We finished up our preseason preparations with a solid 2-1 win over a very good Adelphi team. Our goal at the outset of the game was to turn in a good performance and not worry about the score line at the end of the game. We began the game pressing high up the field and created numerous chances off of turnovers by Adelphi’s back four. As the half wore on, we began to tire and soon found ourselves under intense pressure from Adelphi’s strikers. Adelphi had a few great scoring chances, one that was turned over the bar brilliantly by our junior goalkeeper Michael O’Keeffe. Another shot hit the inside of the post and we was just happy to get to the locker room with a 0-0 score.

In the second half we sat back a little more and retained more of the possession. We found a first goal off an audacious chip/cross by freshman Tim West. We’re convinced it was a cross, but nevertheless a goal is a goal. With 10 minutes to play, Adelphi finally equalized off a set piece to the back post. The ball dropped inside the six and was slotted home by the Adelphi captain. Instead of dropping our heads, we responded with a shot at the other end that was parried away by the goalkeeper and then won the game off a great header on the back post by Adam Cowen. Our resiliency after conceding a goal late in the game was very important because it was that kind of adversity that we were going to have to deal with against Boston College.

In the season opener against Boston College, it was between me and one of our new grad students Keaton as to who would start left back. A few minutes before kickoff, coach decided to start Keaton, who was playing with a separated shoulder, but told me to be ready to come on. About twenty minutes into the first half, it wasn’t Keaton, but one of our center backs Jack Cleverly who came up holding his hamstring. As I jogged onto the field, I remembered our halftime talk against Adelphi where our coach talked about the most influential players on the pitch and how they were always the ones who got noticed because they were affecting the game. If you weren’t affecting the game, you were a dime a dozen player.

It’s always tough coming onto the field after watching because the pace of the game is much faster than it appears from the sidelines. I defended well in the first half but didn’t really have the chance to make an impact on the ball or when our team was in possession. We went into the half with a 0-0 score and at that point had played with Boston College, even controlling the game for periods at a time. The second half began with us on the front foot, really pressing BC and creating a good number of chances that we just couldn’t finish. Then around the 68th minute, Kyle Bekker, the number 10 and playmaker from Boston College, intercepted a back pass and created a piece of magic, beating two defenders and placing the ball in the corner. It was a pivotal moment in the game, because at this point we could’ve just caved in and lost 5-0. Instead, everyone began to rally around each other and instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, continued to press BC.

Down a goal with 25 minutes to go, I began to venture further forward as the ball went down the left flank, hoping I could maybe get on the end of a cross or play a ball into the feet of our strikers, Jack Burridge and Jordan Arryis. After about 10 minutes, Jack Burridge played a ball across the top of the 18 from the opposite flank. The BC winger, who hadn’t had to track me all game, was unaware that I had come in behind him and gotten a touch across his body. As three Boston College defenders converged on me, the ball somehow slipped past them and onto the foot of Jordan, who slotted it with his right foot into the bottom corner.

Our bench erupted. We had pulled back level with Boston College and looked the better team. I could hear Ed Kelly, the Boston College head coach, yelling at his team to raise the energy level because they looked sluggish. We continued to press for the winning goal, and had three great chances to win the game. Their goalkeeper pulled off an unbelievable save on Nuno Rodrigues’ shot to keep the game level.

With 3 minutes to go, a BC player tried a long pass toward the corner flag to their center forward but the ball rolled out for a goal kick. Inadvertently, the Boston College forward tripped while running between our left back Keaton and our center back Jonny Raj. The striker had no chance of getting to the ball, but the referee called a foul at the top of the 18 and gave Keaton his second yellow card of the game, forcing us to play with ten men. Bekker stepped up to take the free kick and buried it low into the right corner. Down to ten men and with two minutes to go, there was nothing more we could do.

It was disappointing to come away with nothing after having outplayed Boston College for stretches, but it was a solid performance in our first game. I thought I had positively influenced the game by making runs forward and eventually helping us to equalize, it was just unfortunate that we weren’t able to finish two or three more. Despite the result it was a very good performance to build on our home opener against Columbia on Friday night.

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Improving One Training Session at a Time

8/22/2011

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Preseason at Fairfield University started for us last Sunday. The first session we had as a team was an inter-squad eleven a side game. College soccer is unique because every year you have to deal with the departure of players and incoming ones who all play with a different style. The first few training sessions are always a little crazy because everyone is playing with a lot of energy but at the same time trying to gel with all the other players. At Fairfield, our incoming class consisted of local players who I’ve known for a few years, two walk-ons, and an international striker from England. He fit right in with all the other international players in our locker room, where there are now five from England and another three from New Zealand.

Since that first day, we’ve had a few days of two training sessions a day and have played friendly matches against Fairleigh Dickinson, a 0-0 draw, and Quinnipiac University, a 2-1 win. Against FDU, we struggled to keep possession and build out of the back, but after a full training session with the emphasis on keeping the ball, we played much better in the win over Quinnipiac. Instead of bypassing the midfield with a long-ball into the striker as we did in the FDU game, we were connecting passes from our defensive midfielder and getting our outside backs and wingers involved. We scored two good goals from a string of 5 of 6 passes which culminated in a great through ball for the first goal and an excellent second goal off a cross from the right flank.

We have our final friendly against Adelphi on Tuesday night as we continue our tune-up for the season opener against Boston College on August 28th. I think our team is continuing to look better and better after each training session and I know our attack is going to be much more potent then the mere 17 goals we scored during the 2010 season.

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After The Game Is Before The Game

We Are Winning, But I Want More

On Any Given Day

The Power of Winning

Rather Be Playing Than Injured

Playing Against an Old Friend & a Motivational Reminder

First Game in the Books

Improving One Training Session at a Time

Matt Danaher

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