Men’s Tigers fall to 10-man Capers

Arfa Ayub, Staff Contributor

The Dalhousie Tiger’s men’s soccer team lost their third game of the season to the Cape Breton Capers, last year’s AUS champions.

“We expected them to be a great team, it didn’t matter that they went 0-2 last weekend. They won the league last year and they had a bunch of returning players and we knew it was going to be a great game,” said Ross Hagen.

This was a matchup of two teams who are predicted to finish near the top of the AUS standings. The powerful Capers, though, had struggled on their first weekend, having lost both their home game, which means they sat near the bottom of AUS standings, and were in need of a win.

A bizarre event occurred in the first half. Cape Breton goalkeeper Chris Tournidis came way out of his net and handled the ball outside the box and was sent off for denying a goal-scoring opportunity. Dfender Shayne Hollis was swapped out for a replacement keeper, Jonah Gardikiotis, and play resumed.

The first half of the game was an even half for both teams. The Tigers nearly scored twice, with one of those chances coming from Hagen, who has been having a stellar season and who nearly scored his fifth goal of the season in three games.

Despite the chances for both teams by the end of the first half the score remained 0-0.

The lone goal of the game came in the 56th minute scored by the Capers. Kerry Weymann conceded a penalty and Silvano Rajkovic beat keeper Ben Ur to make it 1-0. After scoring the goal the Capers started to take control of the game and fired shot after shot at Ur.

In the last few minutes of the game the Tigers made a few desperate attempts to tie the game but had nothing to show for it.

The Tigers have struggled this season to score goals. After beating Acadia 2-0, they have been held by both Moncton and Cape Breton.

“Both teams had some good chances, we just didn’t finish ours today and we will have to work on that for the future,” said Hagen.