On Friday night TamU-K played a training match against FC Rauma. The venue was Äijänsuo Stadium in Rauma, a proper football stadium with a heated artificial turf. Everything was set up for a great away day, and all the way to the 70th minute everything looked that way. Then something weird happened and a comfortable 0-2 lead thawed into a disappointing 2-2 draw against a far inferior team.

The players and the supporters again traveled on the same bus, so we arrived to the stadium well ahead of kickoff. With plenty of time to

setup and with everybody confident of victory, the atmosphere was relaxed. Personally I was in a very special form after all the preparatory liquids I had enjoyed on the two-hour bus ride. The fact that the match was going to be played outdoors on a stadium only added to the excitement. It felt a bit like in the old days when we followed Tampere United all over Finland.

At the beginning the match seemed ridiculously easy for us. During the first 20 minutes FC Rauma was not able to get out of their own half with the ball at all. Throughout the first half they were able to do so only twice. However, we did not really create many great goal scoring chances either, and Lauri Heittola’s goal with a shot from distance was the lone goal as we went to the halftime break.

The first 25 minutes of the second half gave us more of the same, including the 0-2 goal scored again from distance by Heittola. Then something inexplicable happened. Okay, the 1-2 goal looked like a clear offside and the penalty that lead to the 2-2 equalizer was given a bit softly, but these are no excuses. The problem was that somehow we gave FC Rauma a chance to control a match they had not business controlling. For some reason our players started to look tired, and tired players make bad decisions. I know that some of our players had had flu symptoms, many bad enough that we only had 14 players available for this match, but regardless, the collapse that we saw in unacceptable. I’m sure that all the players agree about that.

If I were to look for positives from this match, one is that we learned that even a bad team can steal points from us this season if we do not play with a 100 % attitude. We also need to do better in the final third, especially with regard to those final passes that open up a chance to score. Yesterday too many of those passes failed. Of course some of this can be explained by the fact that many creative midfielders like Kumara, Saiha, and El-Harrak were missing from the match. However, we need to be able to win a team like FC Rauma no matter who of our 24 players are available on the day.

Now the team does not have another match for two weeks, and to me it seems this might be a good thing. We are probably about six weeks from the start of the season, and from this point on, saying that it is still winter does not work as an excuse for a bad performance. Therefore regrouping in training seems like a good thing to do now.

The next training match will be played in Jyväskylä two weeks from now on Saturday March 23rd. The hosting Blue Eyes Team plays in the fourth tier, and according to people who seem to know about them, they are a very good team. Hopefully we can get most of our projected starters together for this match, because it would be a great opportunity for us to test where we are at. A good fourth tier team should be a much tougher opponent than any of those we will face in Vitonen (sixth tier) this season.

As bad as the result was in Rauma, it still kept our lossless training match record intact. There are three draws in there though, one of which was a very satisfying one (HIFK/2) and one that was a result of a good recovery after being three goals down in the second half (PP-70). However, when we start playing for points, we need to figure out how to turn these tight matches into victories. As cliché as that is.