while TTL Madness is on winter hiatus, i joined a full field squad that plays its games all over ny on sunday mornings. this weeks game was in astoria, queens. after more than 10 years in the city, i had never been to this part of Queens before... always interesting to see different parts of the city. ny is unique in that there's so many central areas.

at the end of road, there was this dust bowl of a field. no grass, just loose dirt and rocks. we were playing a team of Albanians. most of their players were stocky and strong like the bogman. i shook the hand of the guy i was about to cover... he had the meatiest hand I've ever shook in my life. in days leading up to the game, we offered our nice turf field in the city for the game, but the Albanians declined, boasting "we've never lost on this field before."

so we should have known we were in for it. ground passes were impossible here and the Albanians knew it. they worked one touches in the air which resulted in the first goal. they were also kicking up the dirt to cause mini-dust storms, blinding our defenders. touche.

second half started no better with 2 early goals. 3-0. but in the last quarter we started to figure things out like any ball to the outside of the penalty area is a good ball here... and Albanian men get tired. we scored 2 ugly, quick goals. in the final minutes, the biased ref ignored a blatant hand ball in their box, and the score didn't change.

although we lost, no one was really upset. we had just played Albanians on a dirt field in Queens on a sunday morning.