Booters Lose to Williams, 2-1

The Crimson booters yesterday dropped a 2-1 decision to Williams at a game played in Williamstown, despite some excellent plays by goalkeeper Fred Herold.

Herold had an "outstanding game" according to Saunders. Acorn called Herold's performance "his best game yet. Without him, the score would have been 3-1 or 4-1." Herold made 11 saves in the game, most of them occurring when Williams outshot the Crimson 11-5 in the second half.

The Williams forwards were very fast and beat the Crimson fullbacks, but Herold was a formidable last line of defense.

Williams applied constant pressure in the beginning of the first half and scored on a penalty shot when Crimson fullback Ralph Booth was called for tripping, inside the penalty area.

But Harvard was undaunted by this tally and came back to dominate play the rest of the first half. "We came back well after the initial offensive surge by Williams," said Dave Acorn.

The booters applied enough pressure for Acorn to score on a pass from Lyman Bullard at 31:06 in the first half. An indication of this pressure was that throughout the first half, Harvard outshot Williams 17-8.

But the tide turned in the second half, Williams came out and dominated play, putting constant pressure on the Crimson defense, and finally scoring with 4:43 left in the first half.

Some Crimson booters thought that one of the Williams forwards was offside on the goal scoring play but the referees didn't agree.

Fullback Ralph Booth got beaten on the play, but according to halfback Chris Saunders, fullback Geoff Hargadon stopped on the play thinking that the Williams attacker was offside.

"We played really well in the first half," goalie Fred Herold said, "but in the second half we had a letdown. The team got tired because Williams was applying so much pressure. We lost our concentration."

"Things broke down in the second half but there was no excuse for the letdown," Saunders said, who sat out most of the second half when he got leg cramps. "They began to work the ball a lot better up the middle. I don't know about anyone else, but I was tired and couldn't perform like I should have," Saunder said.

"Our biggest problem in the game," Acorn said, "was that we didn't capitalize on the opportunities we had." "We had a lot of pressure on the Williams' goal in the first half, but the ball was always one or two feet away from the nearest offensive players."

"In the second half we didn't control the midfield while their midfield played well," Acorn added. "Their fullbacks were playing flat, and we would've had more opportunities if we had chipped the ball over their heads. I would come back to take the ball from the midfield but they would chip the ball and the fullbacks could boot the ball out. It was a question of smarts."

"Playing flat is a strategy that involves all of the fullbacks playing at the same depth. This formation can best be attacked by having the halfbacks chip the ball over the fullbacks' heads and having forwards rush in after the ball.

The team travels to Franklin Field in Philadelphia with a 2-1 record in the Ivies, to play a solid Penn team. The game will be played Friday night at 8:30.