The blog has been on hiatus for a while, and therefore many recent events have gone without comment. That might have been a good thing in some ways, because the cancellation of the away match against Blue Eyes Team in Jyväskylä ten days ago would have been difficult to write about at the time. Since then I have learned that many unfortunate

factors contributed to the fact that we had to forfeit the match on the morning of the match, and I’m quite certain nothing like this will happen ever again. It was certainly a learning experience for many of the people involved.

That said, the fact that we had trouble getting a team together for a match is somewhat disconcerting. Yes, a few players had injuries and others had flu symptoms and could not play, but since we have 24 players on the roster, we need to be able to put a team together regardless of the circumstances, especially at a time when the battle for playing time should be at its fiercest.

These difficulties carried over to last Sunday, when we played another training match against LeKi away at the heated artificial turf in Valkeakoski, a 2-1 loss after a decent performance. On the positive side, playing this match was never in question, but the fact that the match day roster had only 14 players who will be playing for us in competitive matches is far from optimal, especially noting that three of these players were goalies.

Does this mean we need to add players to the team? It is hard to tell. Any team at this level is going to have absences that are not related to injuries or illness, but earlier in the spring we were a team that was quite exceptional in this regard. Has this changed, or does it only seem like that because of all the injuries and illness? I don’t have the answer, but it would seem risky to wait much longer to find out. The competitive season starts in 3-4 weeks, depending on scheduling.

Head coach Suonsyrjä seems to be reacting to this. Word is that we are getting another player from a fourth tier team on a tryout. I do not have any further details on this, but it will be interesting to see how the team reacts to any new trialists. Hopefully we will see a renewed sense of urgency in the fight for playing time. On Saturday we have another training match against FC KaVo, and that would be a great place to start.