No Answers For Premier in 1-1 Draw
The Dallas Premier continued its season’s slide downhill with no answers for their season long scoring problems. With the 1-1 draw versus Houston South Select on Saturday night, the Premier took things out of their own hands and handed their playoff hopes into the hands of the other teams in their division. Without help, the Premier will have no chance of appearing in the WPSL Final Four they are hosting at UTD July 31-August 1st.
The highly heralded team appears to be anything but a playoff team at this point. The scoring opportunities were there as three times Premier players found themselves with point blank chances to score and could only kick the ball straight to the South Select goalie. Score any one of those three opportunities and this is a completely different game. “ I haven’t ever seen anything like it,” an obviously down head coach Brian Flanagan said afterwards, I mean we are five, six yards away and we can’t find the back of the net. And not just once or twice but all season we can’t score. Everyone is working hard in practice, I'm not sure why we can't score .” On this night, thanks to the Premier defense it looked as if this was going to be a 0-0 tie as Houston Select had only one Shot on goal going into the 85th minute but the Premier left a South Select player on the back side open and a cross allowed the all alone player to put the ball in the net. A sense of urgency set in for the Premier and the lifeless group began putting together some things and in the last 10 seconds of the game, extended with stoppage time, F, Brittany Slyman from the top of the eighteen yard box turned left footed on a ball and burnt the back of the net with the game tying score. Owner/General Manager Paul Marshall left no doubt about his unhappiness with his teams play. “We have to find the solution to the problem as to why these girls are having trouble scoring. I don’t have the answer to the problem because I don’t know what the problem is. To solve the problem you have to know what the problem is, you can count on one thing, I am not going to stand by and let this thing continue to go south. WE will find out what the problem is and then fix it. This team can still win the U23 National championship and the Women’s Open National Championship and we have our bye coming up. I am going to do whatever I have to do to right this ship. What I do know is we are half way through our season and making the playoffs is now in someone elses hands."
