Game 6 Ticket Stub

So if you have been following allsports for his sports news and sports on the web, you will be aware from the previous post that the Brampton Excelsior’s are battling the Peterborough Lakers for the right to host the 2010 Mann Cup.  Brampton was up in the series 3-2 going into last nights game at home and with a win, would have earned the right to host the New Westminster Salmonbellies for the Canadian Senior Box Lacrosse Championship.

Salmonbellies Logo

But the Lakers had something to say about that and they were not going to go quietly. There is just too much talent and experience on the Peterborough team to go meekly into the night in 6 games. Brampton did out shoot Peterborough in the game 58-38 and had plenty of chances but Mike Thompson stood tall in the Lakers net and was outstanding. It was easily his best game of the series and his teammates should have been buying his beer on the bus ride home because he was the difference in the game. Anthony Cosmo seemed to be fighting the ball a bit in the Brampton net which is unusual for him. He is arguably the best goalie in the league and rarely gives up a bad goal.

Anthony Cosmo

The game started off as a very close checking affair and the Lakers took a 2-1 lead into the first intermission. Things started to unravel for the home side in the second though as every opportunity  they had was turned aside by Thompson. The Lakers built a 5-1 lead at one point but the Excelsiors closed to 5-3 by the end of the 2nd period.

Mike Thompson

In the third period the wheels fell off for the home side as the Lakers scored five straight goals to put the game away. Brampton got one more goal in the last minute of the game but it was too little, too late and the final score was 10-4 in favour of the Lakers.

Game seven for all the marbles and the right to host the Mann Cup goes, Labour Day Monday, Sept 6 in Peterborough at 7 PM. Brampton will have to play their best game to squeak this one out as the Lakers don’t loose too many at home in front of their very supportive fans. Allsports would like to see the Excelsiors pull it off to bring the Mann Cup back but the Lakers are a formidable team and Brampton has already won a game there. It will surely be a battle royal no matter the outcome.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

2010 Brampton Majors Team Photo

So there has been quite a bit going on in the Major Lacrosse Series for sports news and sports on the web while allsports was away on holidays in the past week. Three games have been played since my last post . The series has unfolded as allsports predicted, being very close and hard fought. Which is more than I can say about the Western Lacrosse Association final where New Westminster took out Victoria in four straight games.

Brampton Player

Allsports was wondering what to write about for sports news or sports on the web when I decided to write about the lacrosse game I went to last night in Brampton. The two time defending Mann Cup Champion “Brampton Excelsiors” were taking on the “Peterborough Lakers“  for the eastern championship. The winner of the “best of seven” series will get the right to host the western champion for the Mann Cup, which is the trophy awarded to the senior men’s lacrosse champions of Canada.

Brampton Excelsiors 1893

Lacrosse has been played for a little while here in Brampton, in fact the Excelsior organization has been in existence since 1893, longer than the NHL or NFL have been around and rivaling Major League Baseball. The MLB has been around since 1901 but the National League has been in existence since 1876.

The Mann Cup

The game last night was entertaining to say the least and great value for the $10 admission. Brampton won the encounter by the score of 10-8 but they needed overtime to get the job done. The Lakers had tied the score with about 10 seconds left in regulation. Brampton needed the Game because the Lakers had taken the first game of the series at home 12-8. Brampton could not afford to be down two games to a very talented Lakers team.

Excelsiors vs Lakers

This series will be tough and hard fought and likely go a full seven games. The winner will then host the west for the Cup. The western final is being played between Victoria and New Westminster. New Westminster holds a 3-0 series lead.

Here is the rest of the Brampton Peterborough series schedule

Peterborough Lakers vs
Brampton Excelsiors

Games 6-7 if necessary

Aerial view of Science North

As far as how the Brampton women made out, they won a silver medal after being defeated by Orangeville in the final. Brampton’s Midget boys box lacrosse team also won a silver medal. The Orangeville girls did play better than our team and were deserving of the gold medal. It was the old adage, your best players have to be your best players and unfortunately some of our best were invisible in the final game. The bottom line though is that the girls had fun and are better off for the experience. It was too bad that they decided to have rookie Ref’s do the gold medal game. They did not have a clue and ran around with their thumb up their ass for the whole game. I don’t blame them for the loss but they were brutal with poor judgment and missed calls on both sides. Allsports was shocked at the short sightedness of the organizers.

Sudbury views

You don’t like to say anything bad about the hosts and I am sure they did the best they could do but the location for lacrosse, both girls field and boys box was deplorable. The fields were as tough as concrete and as rough as cow pasture. Areas of sand a gravel were showing through. The arena for the box games was decrepit and run down. More attention should have been given to the profile of Canada’s national summer sport.

Sudbury sunset

Finally, the local politicians thought it might be a good idea to have the downtown main street all torn up for roadway construction during the games. This made for frustration in trying to move about the city. I know the season for construction is short in the north but they had known for two years that they were hosting the games. The planning was poor and there is no excuse for it.

All in all Sudbury might be a nice place to visit but I would not want to live there.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

Stage Ontario Games

Hi Everyone well allsports got here to Sudbury after about 5 hours of driving and at times not within the law. People say in Canada there are two seasons for driving in Canada, winter and construction, lol. You get caught in it and then have to race like a mofo to try and get back on schedule. The things you do for sports news and sports on the web, not to mention getting your kids to the team on time.

athletes getting ready for opening

So everyone is now settled in, the girls had their team meeting, having a blast with their team mates and got off to the opening ceremonies. Allsports was there but keeping a low profile talking to different people and other parents who’s kids are involved in lacrosse as well as other sports. The last thing the girls want to see is dad hanging around, part of the whole experience is to hang out with your team, meet other athletes and have some fun without parental supervision.

The bleachers

As far as the sports go, there are too many to name but you have lacrosse which obviously I will be watching and everything from canoeing to Baseball and rifle shooting. Some of these young adults will be our future Olympians and maybe it should happen every year instead of every two.

The Field with CTV there

The city of Sudbury have been gracious hosts and seem to have everything well organized. There are many volunteers and event coordinators. Numbers I will be able to post later with information I get from Kristina Lang, the “Marketing Officer” for Sudbury Tourism.

Womens Lacrosse coming in

Anyway allsports must confess that I took off a bit early once the political bags of wind got the microphone, but really people can you blame me? Getting robbed by them is enough, do I have to listen to them too?

Our Team with other athletes

I did manage to get so pretty good pictures of the events though and will share them with you now. This event is great for our young athletes regardless of the political wind you have to endure to carry it off,

” No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

P.S. Sorry about the pictures but they had to be reduced for the blog. Almost makes me think they are not worth taking

World Field Lacrosse Logo 2010

The Canadian men’s lacrosse team put up a valiant fight for world field lacrosse supremacy but in the end they came up just short. If you have not heard yet through the sports news or sports on the web, the US edged the Canadian men 12-10 in a hard fought championship game.

Team USA Player

The USA jumped out to an early 3-0 lead and then held a 3-2 lead after the first quarter. By the half the US had expanded the lead to 8-4. Canada held off the Us in the third quarter and got back to 8-8. Canada went ahead early in the fourth quarter 10-9 but the US rallied with 3 goals to take back the lead then killed the clock by holding possession with some good ball control passing. There is no time limit for a shot in field lacrosse but in box lacrosse you have a 30 second clock that counts down. If there is no shot on goal when the clock expires, you loose possession to the other team.

Team Canada Goalie Chris Sanderson

The CBC thought the final was important enough to put on the front page for sports and TSN 2 did show the final but other than that allsports thought the coverage of the event or lack there of was very disappointing. Lacrosse is Canada’s national summer sport but still does not get the recognition it deserves. Nothing was broadcasted in the sports news and you have to search sports on the web for any results. Allsports feels that’s just not good enough. For more on the game go here.

Allsports thought he would add a couple of video’s here at the end of the post just to give the readers an idea of the field game and box game.

Here is a introduction video put out by US Lacrosse

Here is a video on Box Lacrosse so you can see the difference.

They are both pretty tough games. Canada is more noted for box lacrosse but can play with the US now in field.

I would also like to take this opportunity to send allsports best wishes to Chris Sanderson, arguably the best field lacrosse goalie Canada has ever produced, and one of the best ever. Chris always battled to the end on the lacrosse pitch but now he has to face his biggest battle yet. Chris has been diagnosed with Cancer but allsports is sure that if anyone can beat the dreaded decease, Chris can.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

Greater Sudbury

First, the summer is a busy time of year as I have likely mentioned before. Both of my daughters are very active in rep lacrosse and play it at the highest level available here in Canada. Games on the weekend followed by practice at least twice a week. In fact we are up in the northern Ontario city of  Sudbury next week so the girls can participate in the Ontario Games.  For those of you not familiar with how vast Ontario and Canada is. Sudbury is about a 5 hour ride by car, north of Toronto. To get there in 5 hours  you would need to have an average speed just above 100 kilometers per hour. I have written previously on the girls lacrosse with the last article that was done last August, titled Allsports and the All Sports Buzz.

Daughter Lindsay Last year

The second reason why allsports has not been on the net as much had to do with the company that was hosting “All Sports on the Web”. It was driving me crazy, everyone that I talked to could get to my Blog but me. Every time I would try to get on and write a post, the URL would time out on me, so I could not get in. I did trace routes and pings. The pings would go out but not be received. The trace route would max out at over 30 hops and the IP address where it got stuck was somewhere in Virgina. The  last few posts that allsports did were thanks to my friends at Success Patrol and Success Blog Net.

BlogNet-Awards

I would write an article to my Google documents, then share it with my friend, who would then post it for me through my admin area. I was not the best arrangement but when you are going crazy trying to figure out whats wrong, it was the next best thing. Needless to say without going into much detail, the host that allsports had is no longer the host for “All Sports on the web”

So hopefully now I am back and the technical issues have all been laid to rest.

” No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

The final for the Wold bragging rights is set for Saturday and the two perennial powers in the world will be facing each other once again. Those two my friends are the United States and Canada. The other teams in the tournament just don’t stack up to these two in terms of talent. The next best team is Australia,which Canada defeated 15-6 yesterday in one of the semifinals. The US crushed Japan in the other semifinal by a score of 20-5.

Iroquois Nation is usually right up there in a mix for the metals but did not get to participate this year because the English Authorities would not let them into the country without passports. You see the First Nations peoples do not have birth certificates, never mind a passport. It was too bad considering they usually field a very good team.

The US and Canada did meet in the round robin with Canada posting a 10-9 victory. It should make for a great see-saw battle in the championship game. Since  the inception in 1967, the event has only seen these two countries as champions. The US holds eight titles, while Canada holds the other two. The most recent of which was in 2006 where Canada held off the US for a 15-10 victory. The game was much closer than the score indicated.
So with the history of the way these teams stack up you can expect a great game with the final outcome decided by two goals or less.

“No Guts No Glory”
Walt Webb

So if you have been following sports news or sports on the web here in Southern Ontario, you will be aware by now that the Orangeville Northmen have repeated as Minto Cup Champions.

This is a large accomplishment for the young men on the Northmen because it is hard enough to will the cup once, but winning it for a second consecutive year is a feat that they should be quite proud of. They proved again Sunday night that they were the best team. Brampton put up a gutsy fight but in the end the Northmen proved to be the superior team. Proving that their come from behind series win in the eastern final was no fluke.

The final score in Sunday’s game was Orangeville 8, Brampton 4. The Owen Sound connection of  Adam Jones and Matt MacLeod proved to be to much for the Brampton boys to handle and ulitmately swung the Minto Cup final series in the Northmen’s favor. Those two players aside it was a great team effort by Orangeville.

They played a great bend but not break defensive game Sunday, not allowing the Brampton offence much in the way of penatration. When they did on occasion, Nick Rose was there to stop the attempt. Rose also deserves special mention stopping 42 of 46 shots in the victory,  putting an exclaimation point on his junior career. I am sure his father, Tony was looking down from above with pride.

Although hard as it may be for the Brampton boys to accept right now, they played their hearts out and can hold their heads high even in defeat. They gave the Northmen all they could handle and every game these two teams played against one another was a knock down drag em out affair. Allsports would like to give special mention to Kyle Rubisch who in allsports eyes, is the best junior aged defensive player in the country.

To prove the point Rubisch was assigned the task of handling Adam Jones. He did a great job for the most part but there were three occasions where Rubisch was not on the floor when Jones was and Jones made the most of the opportunity by scoring twice.

In closing allsports would like to thank the members of both teams for an exciting and well played series. There were no losers here, the boys gave it their best with some great lacrosse action. The 2009 Minto Cup in Brampton was a huge success and the fans were entertained with some great lacrosse.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

P.S. A special thanks to Denis and Becky Pellerin for there photographic additions to allsports posts. Denis, as I have said before, has a great knack for capturing the moment. You can see all of his great shots at Pellerins Photography.

Allsports here with a Minto Cup sports news update for sports on the web.

Well it was another nail biter at the Powerade Center last night. Nick Rose was allowed to play in the game due to a ruling change in 2008 that allsports was not aware of. I must apologize for the misinformation. The illegal equipment issue  became a minor penalty  in a major level championship with no suspension.

There was a ceremony at the beginning of the contest to honor the men that were involved in Bramptons last Minto Cup championship 50 years ago. They were the champions from 1957 through to 1959 and the surviving members of the team were rightfully honored at center floor before the game.

Andrew Potter won the “BOBBY ALLAN” award for League scoring Champion

Matt Sawyer being the utter moron that he is, sent his team out onto the floor during the ceremony. The mental midgets in the stands started cheering and the whole ceremony was interrupted due to this classless act. This redneck mentality just proved one thing to allsports. You may have a very good lacrosse team but you have NO CLASS what so ever and are so busy with your naval gazing with your small town minds and your little bubble of a universe that you have no respect for the game, the history or the etiquette that should be associated with being a true champion. So on that note alone, Allsports hopes the Northmen get their ass kicked tonight because it would be and embarrassment to have the Northmen as Canadian Champions of the game which Allsports loves.

You may be a good team, even a great team Northmen, but with a moron like Matt Sawyer at the helm you will always be little League where it matters most, in the respect department. In closing I hope the Canadian Lacrosse Association got an eye full of your B.S. Antics and fines your ass big. Champions or not after that display you will always be bottom dwellers.

Michael Burke Nick Rose

Now that I have said what needed to be said lets move on with the other awards and the game itself. Adam Jones of the Northmen, won the “JIM VELTMAN” outstanding player of the year award, Michael Burke won the “JOEY NIEUWENDYK AWARD” for rookie of the year and Kyle Rubisch, the Brampton captain won the “JOHN ‘GUS’ MCCAULEY MEMORIAL AWARD“  as defensive player of the year. Nick Rose won the “ROBERT MELVILLE MEMORIAL AWARD” for outstanding goaltending, he shared it with Dillion Ward. There were others players honored but allsports just concentrated on the ones in the game.

Adam Jones Kyle Rubisch

The game itself was another Gem with lots of action at both ends of the floor. Both teams were neck and neck with shots on goal and scoring chances. Adam Jones was the dominant player on the floor last night and it was a good thing for the Northmen that he was. Jones, an Owen Sound native was responsible for five of the Northmen’s eight goals, without him Orangeville would not even have been in it.

Brampton held a 2-1 lead after the first period and seemed to have more of the play in the second. As I said Adam Jones was the main reason Orangeville was still in the game after two periods. That and the fact that Nick Rose was giving Orangeville good goaltending and outplayed Steve Fryer on the night. There were a couple of goals that Steve would have liked to have had back.

In the third period the teams were knotted at eight, when with 4:24 left on the game clock, McGourty penetrated the Northmen defence and beat Rose with a bounce shot. Dane Stevens added an insurance marker shortly after and Cam Flint added an empty net goal to seal the victory. The final score was Brampton 11, Orangeville 8. Setting up the finale tonight.

All B.S. aside the lacrosse on the floor has been great entertainment. These young men have played their hearts out and given the fans some “edge of their seat” action. The way the two teams have played the games it has made for a very successful Minto Cup. There is not a loser on either side and no matter the outcome both teams can hold their heads high. It’s just too bad that only one team can lay claim to the Trophy.

Pictures are courtesy of Pellerins Photography.

“No Guts No Glory”

Walt Webb

P.S. Congradulations to the Brampton Majors for winning the major series east title. They defeated a very strong Peterbourgh Lakers side 4-2, to claim the prize and earn the right to go out west to play the New Westminster Salmonbellies and try to defend their Mann Cup title.