Tigers open with a win

Armaan Ahluwalia, Sports Contributor

The Dal Tigers beat the Acadia Axemen 2-0 at Wickwire Field on Saturday , Sept. 11, a day with rain and sunshine which saw the Tigers emerged victorious.

Dal seemed to control the game throughout, and this advantage helped them in the end.  The team jumped out to a fast pace, taking an early lead after midfielder Ross Hagen scored in the sixth minute.  The Tigers were starting to push up and caused Acadia some problems. They managed to win a corner after a nice shot was taken just outside the 18-yard box. The ball eventually ended up on the head of Hagen for the goal.

Around the 15 minute mark the Tigers seemed to slack off a bit after scoring the goal, and the Axemen took advantage. The play started to shift in favour of Acadia.

There was a bit of rough play that took place in the 23rd minute as the ref showed two yellow cards, one to the Tiger’s Zach Fisher and the other to Devlin Gilmour-Ford.

Around the 35th minute the rain came down for a solid 10 minutes and in that period, the Axemen managed to take back some possession and create two scoring attempt for Jonathan Hammond.  Both of those chances came by getting around Zach Fisher, who had a bit of trouble in the first half as he pushed up quite a bit and had trouble dealing with Erik Merchant.

The second half was not as fast paced as the first as both sides seemed to slow down the pace of attack and pick and choose their opportunities.

The ref delivered 3 more yellow cards in the second half, to Tyler Lewars and Zachary Shaffelburg, who seemed to be getting a little frustrated along the sidelines as he was dealing with Jordan Mannix. Nathan Rogers was also shown a card in the 81st minute for a tough tackle in Dal’s end.

After  65 minutes the Tigers offence seemed to disappear.  Dal made a substitution in the 70th which turned out to be a good call on head coach Pat Nearing’s part.  He subbed in Andrew Hutchison for Lewars and within 7 minutes, the team had created some good chances. Soon, Hutchison, working down the right side of the Acadia defence, managed to cross the ball as the keeper was out of position leaving it for Hagen to tap in, giving Dal a 2-0 lead.

In the 87th minute Ben Ur made a great save on an Acadia free kick to keep a clean sheet.

The match ball goes out to the captain Ross Hagen, who not only scored both goals, but controlled the midfield as well.

Match Stats

Dalhousie-Goals-Card

Ur-0

Fisher-0-Y

Rogers-0-Y

Weymann-0

Mannix-0

Hawley-0

Hagen-6’, 76-’

Haughn-0

Hart-0

Perrotta-0

Lewars-0-Y

Ezurike (Hart 27’)-0

Hutchison (Lewars 69’)-0

Stoddard (Ezurike 83’)-0

Kovacevic (Hagen 85’)-0

Dalziel (Fisher 87’)-0

Acadia-Goals-Card

Ross-0

Tetlow-0

McGill-0

Gilmour-Ford-0-Y

Merchant-0

Hammond-0

Shaffelburg-0-Y

Thakrar-0

Dutton (Tetlow 61’)-0

Hislop (Gilmour-Ford 74’)-0

Ezekiel (McGill 78’)-0

Unofficial Match Stats

Shots: DAL-7; ACA-3

Total Attempts: DAL-15; ACA-9

Fouls: DAL-14; ACA-3

Cautions: DAL-3; ACA-2

Ejections: DAL-0; ACA-0

Offsides:  DAL-1; ACA-1

Corners:  DAL-9; ACA-7