LOSS: 1-3 vs Austin Athletic – The NEMP Hurricane Strikes Again As Badgers Lose Second Straight Match

Noon. NEMP. Windy. Aye.

With an unknown number of Badgers headed up north for the game, a sparse Badgertown assembled to watch the Punters vanquish the Livers. Don’t look away, but the Punters are slowly creeping up on the Badgers points total, which is not to be allowed.

Jefe was back in full Captain Ahab facial trimmings on his birthday week. Ciro arrived on a sunny, 70 degree day looking like US Senator John Fetterman in his CRU hoodie with rolled up sleeves. Peterson mused at the howling winds. Billy said no but arrived ready to the hero and put it down to a tech-support error. Parks had a lovely shaved head. Chappy may have been on Mexican dog tranquilizers. In the end, 13 Badgers were in house to face the wind and AAC.

Ciro wanted CRU to take the 120mph winds in the first half, knowing “they can change direction at any moment.” Can they?

So the Badgers were on the attack for the first half, knowing they needed to nab a few goals with the 12th man advantage. It was looking promising at the start as the Honey Badgers had attacks galore. Chappy put in a nice cross from the right after Derek laid the ball off. Gianluca had a thunderbolt to the keeper from a tight angle. Derek was firing in corner kicks and cutting back defenders at will. That was the good part of playing with the wind.

The not-so-good part was that any through ball or long pass continued its journey from the back of the field to Pecan Blvd and beyond.

With yet another corner kick, Derek sent the ball into the box where Jake reversed his gravitational pull and actually jumped up alongside the keeper. The ball came off his leg and into the net of the opening goal! But wait, the referee called some b/s about keeper interference. Bad call and the goal was disallowed. Jake was hot!

The next great chance again came from Derek as he took tiny strides down the left and saw the Bald Dome of Power headed to the right side of the box. Ball hit head as Chappy’s head connected with perfection, but his continued proximity to Ciro caused the ball to drive right to the keeper to be saved.

Not to fear as it was Schwarzy to the rescue with an absolute worldy of a goal. Brian picked up the ball at the top of the box, made some space for himself with a few deft touches, and dropped a curling bomb to the top right corner for an impressive opening goal.

Hoping to ride out the windy half with the lead, the Badgers were caught by one of Austin Athletic’s only against-the-wind attacks where they snuck in a goal to the near post.

1-1 at the half and oranges were served.

The second half was….. difficult. The wind was unreal, even for NEMP, and the Badgers were defending against it, and tracking back into it. Austin Athletic had CRU on the back foot for most of the half as they surged forward, looking for more goals.

Jefe had to take a cautionary break from the action, giving his bum ankle a rest, so that left the Badgers with 1 sub to fight the wind.

AAC got a break when they took a corner, it hit the jet stream, and traveled right over the heads of a leaping Ciro and Jaybone. Credit NEMP with the assist on that one.

And with a third goal on their ledger, Austin Athletic seemed to have the game wrapped up with 20 minutes to go, but that’s when the Badgers went to work.

The Badgers were pissed at the state of things, and it showed as Petersona and Gianluca performed a scene from Seinfeld as Frank and Estelle Costanza. Minus that small blip, the team was all in agreement that they needed to attack, wind be damned! So for the final push of the game, the Badgers were coming in hot. Gianluca was getting the ball down the left. Ciro and Schwarzy were doing work in the center of the pitch, along with the defense, to win back balls. Billy was pushing up high into the attack. And somehow the keeper saved a double close-range effort from Gigi near the end of the match. It just wasn’t the Badgers day.

On the plus side, with an ATX tie, their third place “buffer” increased to 4 points. Which means last place Celtic deserve a severe beating next Sunday as the Badgers try and restore the feel good factor to the sidelines.

Man-of-the-Match: Tough day at the office for the Honey Badgers, but Ciro was doing good work in the center of the pitch, despite having to retrieve shit passes from his Captain.

Post-Game-Report: Schwarzy received a very subtle and gentile icing from Jefe. Ciro was cold, and had some interesting theories of wind speed, and spontaneous changes of their direction. Aaron the Punter infiltrated camp. Chappy needs new boots. Jake knows airports. NEMP can suck it.