Things Get Even Worse for Sockers

Say this. Ralph Black and Kevin Crow are getting a lot of exercise.

They serve as sixth attackers for the Sockers. A sixth attacker is used to give teams an offensive boost in desperate situations. A more desperate situation there has never been for this team.

The Sockers (14-20) seem as if they no longer have a pulse. The latest rout was 6-1 by the St. Louis Storm Saturday night before 9,673 at the San Diego Sports Arena. It was the Sockers’ fifth loss in six games.

St. Louis (17-17) is now second in the Western Division of the MISL, three games ahead of the third-place Sockers, who are seven games out of first and beginning to wonder if they will ever wake up from the nightmare that his been this season.

Black and Crow donned their sixth-attacker jerseys with 7:25 to play in an 8-1 loss to Baltimore Friday. Saturday, they did so with 6:27 remaining.

Crow sat motionless in the corner of the locker room afterward. Black, sitting to his left, talked quietly. Things have never been this bad.

“I thought this team could explode,” he said. “I think it exploded in the wrong direction. I don’t think I’ve been on a team that’s lost back-to-back games as bad as we have.”

The team as we know it may not be around much longer. Owner Ron Fowler, President Ron Cady and Newman held a closed-door meeting 15 minutes after the game ended. Discussion undoubtedly centered around a trade, which now appears imminent. Fowler said beforehand it would happen if the team didn’t show improvement Saturday. And he probably doesn’t consider it a significant improvement that the Sockers lost by five goals instead of seven.

Newman is simply perplexed.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “We can’t even stay in a game. We miss wide-open, gaping goals.”

Changes?

“We’re going to start fresh, start new faces,” he said. “And we are going to go again.”

The Sockers began to unravel late in the second quarter. With the game scoreless, they missed a golden opportunity to take a lead when forward Zoran Karic mis-hit a close-range shot. Fifteen seconds later, Stan Terlecki was at the other end, sending the ball past Socker goalie Zoltan Toth. Thirty-six seconds remained in the half.

With the exception of a nice goal by midfielder Waad Hirmez midway through the third quarter, the Sockers’ offense was less than sparkling for the remainder of the game. Hirmez took a restart kick from Karic and sent it in off the right post with his left foot.

Any shot of life that it gave the Sockers was short-lived. Later in the third, Storm midfielder Claudio De Oliveira took the ball the length of the carpet into a crowd of Socker defenders and dumped it left to Terlecki, who scored left-footed. St. Louis forward Gary Heale scored early in the fourth quarter to give the Storm a 3-1 lead.

Then, after the Sockers went to their sixth-attacker offense, St. Louis kicked them three more times when they were down, midfielder Michael Collins scoring once and forward Godfrey Ingram twice.

So instead of two victories on this home stand, the Sockers came away with two losses. Everything is still the same. Even the questions.

Crow was asked why this team, which has essentially the same key players as last year’s, has had such a difficult time.

“There’s a big difference in the makeup and chemistry,” he said. “We lost a lot of what I consider experienced professionals. Whether they had smaller roles or not doesn’t really matter. They knew when to make the passes and how to defend. You didn’t have to tell them.

“It’s just the makeup of this team is a lot slower to catch on and deal with the situation than in year’s past.”

Among the experienced players the Sockers have lost since last season is Gus Mokalis, who now plays for St. Louis. And Steve Zungul, who has played sparingly all year, has been lost experience also. He isn’t as fit as he was last year, which he attributes to lack of playing time.

Whatever, Zungul is no more able to explain the Sockers misfortunes than anyone else on this team.

“No one knows the answer,” he says.

Socker Notes

Socker owner Ron Fowler said he was scheduled to meet with a general manager (believed to be from the St. Louis Storm) sometime during or after Saturday night’s game to discuss trade possibilities. Fowler was disheartened by the Sockers’ 8-1 loss to Baltimore Friday. “It was a major setback,” he said. “I think we stunk up the place. If we play as poorly tonight as we did last night, we’ll make some changes . . . We’ll have a very narrow group of players that are untouchable.” How many? “I think you can count them on one hand.” Fowler, who said the Sockers are considering making more than one trade, doesn’t expect a deal to be completed Saturday. “I think with the salary cap ($875,000) it takes longer to put a deal together,” Fowler said. “We’re flat up against our salary cap.”