Another shot at the Blue
By Davie Wong, Sports Editor
It’s safe to say that the Royals have not quite found their mid-season form yet. Or if they have, they are hoping to move away from it. The second quarter of the season has seen the team go 0–1–2 against some stiff competition.
In week four of PACWEST soccer, the women will be taking on the Capilano Blues once again. Their last matchup in week two ended up in a 1–1 tie, with the Blues drawing even after a fantastic Mikayla Hamilton strike.
With both teams unable to find a mistake to capitalize on, the game rolled out to a draw. This time around, the teams are meeting on different terms. The Blues have also been struggling. In the last three games, the team has surrendered four goals, scored two, and gone 0–1–2. Their last game was a defeat at the hands of the Langara Falcons.
That doesn’t mean that the Royals can take their North Vancouver opponents lightly. They have been having their own struggles as well. Defensively, the team has been doing rather poor. In three games, the team has allowed five goals against while only scoring three. Mathematically, if the team lets in 1.6 goals a game, and only scores 1 goal a game, they’re going to lose quite often.
The team needs to tighten up defensively. They’ve needed to do that since week one, and with the season hitting its peak, there is some concern, because they seemingly still haven’t got it figured out.
The other way they could go at it is to just score more. Their offence has been fairly standard, averaging just a single goal in each of their four games since the VIU explosion. If they go the route of more offence is the best, the team will need to score one more goal a game.
Halfway into the season, two players have really emerged as the Royals best scorers: Andrea Perrotta and Mikayla Hamilton. If both those players find a way to get a goal in the same game consistently, then the offence of the Royals should be enough to push them past most of their competition. Though the pairing has looked better in the last few games, they still aren’t quite on the same page. With a little more fine tuning, the duo could be one of the deadliest in the PACWEST, playing a similar role to last year’s duo, Danae Harding and Marni McMillan.
The problem is, there really isn’t much of a season left to fine tune. At this point in the season, every game matters, and a loss could really be costly in the standings. Quite often, teams will mention that they try to “peak” at the right moments in the season to come into playoffs hot. For the Royals, this would probably be a good week to start climbing that hill, before it turns into a mountain.
