It was supposedly a rougher, tougher, meaner Salt Lake Sting soccer team that showed up for Wednesday night's playoff game with the Colorado Foxes.
Whether it was or not, didn't make any difference. The Sting were outfoxed again, this time by a 4-1 margin.The loss put an end to the Sting season, which began way back in April. The Sting finished their inaugural season with 13 wins, a tie and 10 losses. Four of those defeats were against the Foxes, who certainly had the Sting's number all year.
Ten of the defensive-minded Foxes 15 wins this year were by 1-0 margins. However against Salt Lake, they won 2-0, 3-1, 2-0 and 4-1, an 11-2 overall margin.
"We matched up with them very well," said Colorado Coach Emilio Romero. "Some teams just can't beat certain teams. That happens a lot in football."
Salt Lake Coach Laurie Calloway still had a difficult time admitting that Colorado was superior to his team.
"Colorado is not the kind of team you come to watch. It's easy to play that way. It's easier to work on defense rather than offense. But they're effective the way they play."
The Foxes formula - play great defense and wait for the breaks on offense - worked perfectly Wednesday night at Derks Field, where 3,210 showed up despite jacked-up playoff prices.
Calloway had promised before the game that his players would be more physical and not be intimidated by Colorado, which had pushed the Sting around in the earlier meetings.
Salt Lake came out slugging, not literally, but despite a few chances early on, never really threatened to get one past goalkeeper Mark Dodd, the league's player of the year.
Then 30 seconds before halftime, Colorado forward Efren Rodarte got loose on the right side, burst past Joe Silveira with a fake and fired a pass to the middle. Mike Mikes was there to blast a shot that ricocheted off goalkeeper Paul Parkinson's face into the goal.
Calloway felt his team "was the better side" in the first half, but wasn't playing with the proper emotion. He tried to rectify that with an emotional halftime talk and the Sting responded.
Shane Jones, the 18-year-old from Sandy, was inserted into the lineup and 10 minutes into the second half, he drew a foul inside the penalty box. Barney Boyce converted the penalty kick to knot the score at 1-1.
Twelve minutes later, the Sting appeared to have another penalty kick coming when Craig Huft was hit hard inside the penalty area. But the referee called it an obstruction, which meant an indirect kick for Salt Lake.
Dzung Tran's try didn't get through and all of a sudden, the ball was kicked toward midfield. Colorado's Robyn Fraser caught up to the ball with nothing but acres of green grass between him and Parkinson.
At first Parkinson started to come out, but thought better of it and went back to try and make the save. About 15 yards out, Fraser rifled a shot that Parkinson couldn't touch and it was 2-1.
Calloway lamented afterward that a second penalty kick should have been awarded the Sting when Huft was knocked in the penalty area.
"We should have gone up 2-1 if the penalty had been called and instead they got a breakaway," he said.
Colorado's Romero agreed with Calloway that a penalty should have been called, but both coaches agreed the first one against Jones shouldn't have.
"I didn't like that call at all," said Romero. "But I thought the second one was a penalty, so I guess it evened out."
If the Sting didn't already feel deflated after the second Colorado goal, they did five minutes later when Rodarte scored on a rebound off a shot by Chad Aston.
Down two with 19 minutes left, the Sting had little punch left and Rodarte added a meaningless goal in the final minute for the final margin. It marked the first time all year, the Foxes scored as many as four goals.
They Foxes will play at San Francisco Saturday night for the Western Soccer League North title.
Colorado's Romero said he heard about Calloway's pre-game comments and expected a rougher game than he got. "They (Calloway's comments) didn't worry us at all. It kind of got us motivated. We're not out to hurt anybody and they're not either. I think Laurie and Salt Lake are a first-class organization."
In the end, Calloway finally did admit Colorado was superior.
"The bottom line is 4-1 them . . . we're through and they're not. I can't complain. They beat us four times, so they must be the better team."