May 5, 2002
Memphis Shock vs Cambodian FC

This was a bad weekend for us to have a game. The Beale Street Music Festival didn’t do much stop half of our team from getting intoxicated the night before. But the good thing, we already won the division. So we knew we could take it a little easier until the tournament starts. Game time conditions were mid 70’s with damp pitch conditions.

Both teams, and the ref, didn’t seem to be “on top of their games” today. Earlier in the game, JJ was given a ridiculous red card for getting up and telling a guy “F-----g do it again” after he took him down from behind and apparently took a swing at him. The ref said JJ was going after the player when all he was doing was going up to his forward position. But JJ didn’t go after him. He’s smarted than that. What made this call even worse no more than 5 minutes later. One of their players did the same thing to our guy, and pushed him back to the ground when he was trying to get back up. Was there a card? No. Tone set, the ref was not going to call this even.

Later, a CFC player came running into Baxter studs up. Baxter knocked him over and told him to keep that out of his house. The CFC player got a yellow. Then at the request of the side ref, Baxter got a yellow also. But a minute later, the same player did the exact same thing to Kip. Was there another card? No. Studs up again in Kip’s stomach. Amazing.

Going into halftime the score was 0-0. The refs tried to get control of the game but it didn’t work out that way.

We scored the first goal of the game on a beautiful play. Mark took the ball up the right middle side of the field and sent it on to Matt. Matt waited patiently and struck a 15 yard strong header into the far side of the netting for the first goal of the game. Shock leading 1-0. This only frustrated CFC. But they did the right thing, they started mouthing off to us in Spanish. Which apparently, none of the refs can speak. We have a few guys on our team that can and they said what was coming out of their mouths was more vulgar than ours.

We did get another goal later when Kip took a corner kick that the CFC goalie couldn’t hang on to and went straight through his hands into the goal. In between those goals, CFC scored 5 times. Not to mention, we got another 2 reds. One for Todd taking a CFC player down in the box and another for Billy knocking some dude over. That was his second yellow of the game. So we lost 5-2.

The ref called the game early, which was smart. He was not in control of this game at all. The game did not seem to be reffed fairly. We were not the only team out there with bad attitudes, but if one team gets 7 cards (3 red) and the other 3 yellows, what is wrong with the picture?? That’s fine, cause we will still be in D2 next season. I hope we play them again in the final of the championship and beat them again.

Dennis Thompson