Game

This past weekend I played in my first match. Going into game day I was surprisingly not nervous at all. We were picked up by bus and had a 2 hour drive north to Auckland to play Auckland City. On the way, since we had spectators on the bus as well, we stop at a pub and they all had a beer while some of the players on the team had lunch. Quite different than anything I was every used to. Once we made it to the stadium, which was a field with a few stands around, in the middle of a subdivision. If you wanted to clear the ball you were guaranteed to strike a house. The atmosphere was out of control, they had a fan who banged on this homemade drum during the entire 90min of the game.

But once at the field I was placed into the starting lineup at defensive midfield. Had a great warm up with the boys, but once game time started I was a bit shaking. My first pass in this league was a horrible one that went straight out of bounds. I was laughing but after that my game picked up a bit and did not have a horrible game. I was subbed after 60 min for a more attacking shape. Auckland was a very good team, I would compare them to a top usl 1 team or maybe a decent MLS team. They had an Ex-Barcelona player who played right back and they had a South Korean on the team that played in the 2002 World Cup in Korean and Japan. With that being said we only ended up losing 3-0 but it was 1-0 for most of the game.

Hope everyone is doing well and I'll keep everyone posted!

Cheers!

MW