Anaheim scored the points, but was the point made?

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Four Anaheim football players, including running back Matt Contreras, didn’t play two weeks ago against Garden Grove Santiago because of disciplinary reasons -- they had been suspended from school. They didn’t practice last week. They didn’t play the first 45 minutes of their game Magnolia, but they did play in the final three minutes, and Contreras scored the winning touchdown with 28 seconds left in a 27-20 victory in an Orange League opener.

They played because Anaheim (6-0) had blown a 20-0 lead.

“We were going to hold him out for the first half, and then it was up to our coordinators to put him in when we needed him,” Coach Lanny Booher told the Orange County Register after the game. “We needed him at the end.”

Contreras carried all six plays he was on the field. The 66-yard scoring drive was his alone, getting the final 32 in one chunk.

Booher told me Wednesday his job is to win games on Thursday and Friday nights, and to do what is best for the greater good of the program. He fretted that a harder stance could lead back to the days when there are 57 players in his program instead of 157, when the team went 9-61 in the seven seasons before he arrived in 2004. “It’s tough to say which way this was going to fall,” he said.

It was the first time Booher -- whose team went 12-2 a year ago -- had been in that situation.

Sometimes the toughest play-calling is done off the field. Regardless of what the other players wanted their coach to do, or what his assistants wanted him to do, Booher must account for the big picture.

Though few will give it any thought past Thursday’s kickoff against Savanna, it appears as if Booher and his staff sold out. By benching the suspended players until they were needed, was the point made, or did the coaching staff stand firm only as long as it was convenient?

- Martin Henderson