The Dutch have a saying...

Out of my own zeal, I had a foray as forward tonight. I did well, though I did neglect a crucial defensive duty at one point that allowed a goal that eventually would be the difference from getting a result. We lost 6-5 in a very fun game against a team that would be responsible for some good times.

So good, in fact, that we stayed half an hour late and played a scrub match on the open field against them.

Personally, my game went well. I didn't score, but I was threatening and creative. I would venture to say almost too creative.

Excuse my ego, but at one point I may've been as clever and quick-witted as I'll ever be in the span of half a second. You might even call me a flair player after witnessing my exploits.

On a dangerous diagonal run in front of their goal, I drew the attention of a defender and their goalie in a couple touches. I noticed one of our players coming in towards to far post behind me, effectively making a criss-cross with me. She was one of our defenders who never usually scores, so I wanted to make it easy. In that run, I stopped the ball and fooled their entire team, allowing for an open shot on goal which in turn was my fanciest assist ever.

My holding-up was good, my use of space was good, my ability to open the field up was useful; quite basically I make a decent forward. It's up for debate if I'm a better forward than midfielder, but as it stands, I don't mind playing both. Perhaps one hit against me playing forward is my presumed entitlement towards not defending - when we won a ball back I prepared to run up, though we lost it soon after. I ought to have ran back and defended a goal scorer, but I had lazy forward syndrome; which is an officially catalogued disorder in the DSM-IV. Best defined, its when a forward doesn't defend when he or she should.

Let's face it though, forwards are a intrinsicly fragile breed. I've heard feeling bad about letting in goals as an excuse for one to not play defense in order to give others a turn. The worst part? The excuse worked (and still does to this day).

Other notable points include burning a defender (who was either taking away my left footed shot or trying to force me a few miles to the edge of the pitch) with a stepover and shooting (horribly wide on a far post attempt), or having my first shot in the scrub game nestle itself right inside the edge of the goal from a long volley. Next time, I suppose.

Or maybe I'll just play defense to not allow counterattacks.