Edmonton-Milwaukee, August 15

[beachesl]

Edmonton 0- Milwaukee 3

A beautiful evening at Foote Field, about 400 attendance.

Edmonton lacked the usual pizzazz. Part of the reason is that they missed winger Fraser (the biggest playmaker) and right back Devlin (the inspirational leader of the team) due to minor injuries.

The goals by Milwaukee (all in first half) were due to glaring errors by the defence, not Stankov, who did made a couple of tough stops later. Edmonton did start to come on in the middle of the second half, Sibya scoring with a close give and go but the goal being called back due to an improper offside. Chin also hit the bar on one good shot.

The officiating again was bad. One thing I have learnt about the A-League is that the officiating is really stinky. Tonight the referree was not that bad compared to most of his AL brethern (other than having no concept of the distance needed for a free kick- at one point Vigjnevic got a rare yellow card for a comical marking off of the yards to show how far back the MW wall needed to go, but it was worth it- and total inability to see what was happening near the endzones because he was so immobile), but the linesmen were totally incompetent. I noticed that some short slight guy (about 50)in a dark blue blazer with a CSA crest was here for the third straight match taking copius notes. Some other memeber of the audience told me he was here checking on the referreeing. Hopefully he portrays the total shambles of A-League officiating, at least in this corner of the continent, to the shirts in Ottawa and that they somehow convey to their USL partners that this is totally unacceptable. Looking at the other club supporters websites, it appears that over the years they have just adopted a *shrug* , that's the A-League, attitude towards this. I'm trying to be positive about the A-League, but sheesh, the reffing's got to improve. I was a field marshall at the Rocky Mountain Cup (U-13 estern Canada's), and I can tell you that the teenage officiating interns hanlding the matches all did a thousand times better than these jokers.

[Cheeta]

Well, on the ref's behalf the game always looks different at field level.

That being said, when The Revolution comes they're all still going to be 1st against the wall.

400? Ug. I'd say you guys are dead up there but looking back on how the numbers were in Calgary last season after the A-League took over (and I recall them being quite grim) that might not be the case.