The Carleton Ravens men’s soccer season came to an end on Oct. 30 after a 2-1 defeat against the University of Toronto (U of T) Varsity Blues at Varsity Field in the OUA Quarter-finals.
Earlier in the OUA playoffs, the Ravens defeated the Trent University Excalibur in a 4-1 victory at MNP Park on Oct. 26.
Trent opened the scoring in the 30th minute, when Jaycob Bond broke through the Carleton defence and powered the ball past Ravens goalkeeper David Monk just inside the box.
Carleton evened the score in the 41st minute after Ravens midfielder Daud Dahir went airborne to head in a nearly pitch-wide cross from Alex De Couvreur. The rest of the half and the entirety of the second half finished scoreless, sending the game into extra time.
Carleton took a 2-1 lead after Weber Bourjolly took a ball that slipped past Excalibur goaltender David Ellis deep in the box and slid it into the net. That goal would be the winner, although the Ravens would add goals from Andrew Bryan in the 104th minute and Abdul Akinwande in the 117th.
The victory meant the Ravens would head to Toronto to take on U of T, though the result was not as favourable this time around.
“From the first [half], I felt we were a bit flat in the game,” said Ravens head coach Kwesi Loney. “We didn’t execute on [some of our] opportunities.”
The Ravens nearly opened the scoring in the second minute after Bourjolly headed Julian Piccioli’s free kick past Toronto goaltender Mark Rogal, but the goal was called off due to an offside.
The Varsity Blues opened the scoring in the 45th minute when defender David Colelli finished off Nikolay Saveliev’s free kick.
The Ravens were able to even the score in the 74th minute when De Couvreur received the ball at the top of the box off of a pass from Dahir. De Couvreur promptly sent a ball towards the goal, which ricocheted off of a Toronto defender and into the top corner of the net.
The tie game would be short-lived for the Ravens, as Saveliev took a free kick from 20 yards out in the 82nd minute out and bounced off of the crossbar and into the net.
The goal would stand as the one that eliminated the Ravens in the quarter-finals for the second consecutive year.
“As you get into the playoffs, your opportunities to score in games become lesser and lesser,” Loney said. “We weren’t able to capitalize early enough and that was the major difference in the game.”
