First real away game trip

Traveling to Niigata for the first real away match and it was a treat. First we used bus to reach at the Osaka International, not the one on the ocean. Then we flew to Niigata. We left at 6ish in the afternoon and the view from the sky was spectacular. The sun was setting down and the color of the sky and the mountain ranges that still had snow on the top was a good contrast, to me. And I think for the first time I saw the sun set from the plane. Slowly setting into Sea of Japan, like it didn't want to say good-bye, but when the sun hit the ocean, it disappeared rather quickly, like it changed its mind and decided to go the other side of earth to say hello.
We trained that morning and for the training I thought hard to figure what would be a good drill for our National Goalie. The back up jammed her ring finger – left hand, pretty badly so we sent her to coach little kids. Saturdays we have coaching clinics for little ones. She was in charge was….. I don’t know. I guess it went well.
Back to the training, with trainings geared toward distribution – passing, but she wanted to do her drills so, instead of mine, the training was hers.
It turned out that we had similar ideas of what to do for that drills. Although her drills was more basic oriented, I was relieved that she wanted to do passing. I was going to ask her if she wanted to catch some shots and crosses but we did that plenty of that day before, so she already had in her mind that she was going to just work on her passing skills and simple basic catching drills. I’d have to say it went well.
As for game at Niigata, we won!! We came back from goal down to score 4!! They were very scrappy team, as using our head coach’s word, “typical promoted team’s style.” I hear that term quite often in reading soccer news for European teams. I was glad to witness the “typical” game.
The game started rather hectic with ball just being kicked up and down the field. Old fashion “Push and Run” and Niigata just being physical at the contact,; physically just touch. Sure enough, our players lose our purpose and play to their style. Had we had good skills we could have done better, I reckon, and I’m sure for a soccer fan, it became boring after both sides settled down, but still kicking the ball. We seemed to possess better portion of the game, but we get caught with Counter Attack from our own miss passing. And sure enough, just as the first half was winding down, they clear the ball and a lucky bounce, Niigata’s lone striker run through our defense and scores….. We have been attacking well, but we don’t get that break, until second half. Yeah, the locker room during the half time was pretty dark.
We get two breaks: penalty kick which our National team midfield converts, and second book-able offense to their #6, which she is ejected from the game. With 30 minutes left in the game with one player down for Niigata, we some how able to put 3 past their goalie. Niigata was determined and physical team. Yet, we rushed into thinking “we can score more!!” When we should have been thinking, “let’s move the ball, get them tired and take one chance at a time, one goal at a time.”
End result is good, but detail of the game leaves us with much to desire. Is this a right way to phrase it?
Beer after a win is always good, though. Travel back to hills of Mimasaka, country was alright. Win makes everything pretty sweet.

And here are some of the pics from the travel.