Stingers head coach Vladimir Pavlicik was definitely seeing all sorts of colours once the final whistle blew and his team suffered a 4-1 loss to the McGill Redmen, bringing the Stingers record to 0-2-1.
“We got beat by one player,” Pavlicik said. He was speaking about the Redmen’s star striker James Scholefield. “We knew before the game that he was one of the premier players in the league, we just couldn’t contain him.”
But the problems didn’t end there for Concordia; a lack of communication as well as a lack of discipline led to the Stingers’ defeat in front of the faithful home crowd.
“We believed that we could measure up to this team, but individual mistakes as well as bad decisions in the backfield led to our loss,” Pavlicik said.
McGill’s Gareth Pugh opened the scoring for the visiting team as he ripped one by goalkeeper Daniel De Palma at the 20-minute mark. A miscue on the Stinger defence led to the Redmen’s second goal by James Scholefield to end the half at 2-0 for McGill.
The beginning of the second half saw Concordia get on the board when Stingers captain Jason Quinn crossed a brilliant pass to forward, Racim Chitti, in the 54th minute. But James Scholefield’s one-man performance continued as he ripped the twine in the 68th and 79th minute respectively to put the Redmen on top permanently.
“Three goals don’t happen very often,” Scholefield said after the Redmen’s convincing victory, “I’m very glad that it happened, but my main concern is that we do well. We have a good team and my focus is that we continue to win.”
Stingers captain Quinn felt that Scholefield was the X-factor for the Redmen.
“He’s a very good player, he was definitely the difference maker for McGill. You can’t expect to win after one of their guys pops in three goals.” Quinn also complimented the rest of the team.
“Bottom line. they out-wrestled us. We tried hard, but we just came up a bit short,” Quinn said.
Still searching for that elusive first victory of the season, the Concordia Stingers men’s soccer team will have to wait until next week before they can hope for that feat. Sunday’s 4-1 loss following a 3-0 loss to the Universit
