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Admin
 
NK Tomislavgrad
Ivan Rados
1289 Marlborough Crt
Oakville, Canada
L6H 2R9
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 Team News: Streak for the Ages Comes to an End |
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Thursday, January 29
Streak for the Ages Comes to an End
| |  | | NK TG Celebrates a win earlier this year. |
The following was taken from the Hamilton Croatia website. The official NK TG recount will be posted shortly.
(Perns) - The inconceivable finally happened yesterday. Comparing to Cal Ripken Jr's consecutive games played streak, and surpassing the likes of the undefeated Miami Dolphins, Tomislavgrad United finally get a mark under the 'L' column while falling 2-0 to Oakville's Finest in the Oakville Premier Championship game last night.
It all started hours earlier when Hrvatksi Vitez looked poised to break the streak themselves. They went up 1-0 early in their semifinal match against TG, and Vitez rode the hot hand of their netminder late into the second half. With TG pressing to tie, Vitez countered into an odd-man rush and buried a shot past Rob Biturajac to go up by two.
But with five minutes remaining the boys in black finally found a way to get one back - and then the unthinkable.
In the final two minutes, Vitez not only gave up the 2-1 lead, but then allowed TG forward Kory Jazbec to walk in alone from centre and bury the game winner on the breakaway. As players and fans erupted, on the next field over the other semifinal was in full swing.
In the first, Karlovac United went ahead 1-0 on a nifty right-footed shot by forward Joe Parilac. But Oakville's Finest came back strong to tie the game 1-1 only minutes later.
There were decent chances both ways, but it was the referee that would take centre stage. Seemingly trying to hand Finest the win, he called consecutive penalties on Karlovac and Finest ended up having two 5-on-3 advantages. The Karlovac defence stood strong as if they had practiced the three-man triangle before, allowing no real opportunities.
Then a turn for the worse. With under 10 minutes to play in the second half, netminder Frank Perin made an acrobatic save but at the same time dropped in a heap of pain. As he tried to stand, he nearly fell flat and had to be helped off the field, leaving with a torn hamstring.
As he was being helped off, Domer was being issued a red card, along with a Finest player.
Mike Cukina would put on the gloves and get in net, but after losing Domer, Perin, and then the defending of Cukina, things looked grim. And sure enough Finest scored the go-ahead goal. After hitting the post the rebound took a fortuitous bounce in front and an Oakville player put it away in the empty net leaving Cuki no chance.
That would turn out to be the winner ending all hopes of an all-Croatian final.
The Championship match was a boring game where Tomislavgrad United squandered numerous scoring chances and allowed Finest to counter-attack which they turned into a couple of goals. TG was spent after needing every drop of energy to get past Vitez, and they looked tired in the finals.
And so the streak ends. TG and Karlovac will not be back for the next session, but do plan on returning next October for the 2004-05 season.
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