Defense wins championships.

That's a saying from the NFL (National Football League). It means that if you can keep your opponent from scoring, or if you can keep your opponent to a small number of points, you will win!

That's something I subscribe to. Actually, I think that if you defend well, you won't lose. You might draw, but you probably won't lose.

Today at soccer time in school, we tried out the new goal posts that the school had ordered. They're a little large for a basketball court, but we had fun nevertheless.

Now, you might think that with a bigger goal, more goals should be scored. After all, it should be easier to get a shot on target right?

That's usually true. Unless your opponent is playing "pressure defense". What's that? Pressure defense involves harassing your opponents when they are in possession of the ball even when they are in their own half. With pressure defense, the defending team tries to force the attacking team to make mistakes like loose passes. Pressure defense can also cause the attacking team to lose possession near the goal. The are two disadvantages of the pressure defense. Firstly, it's incredibly tiring. Secondly, if you make a mistake, you can be punished quickly.

I can play pressure defense but I don't like to use it unless I absolutely have to because it's so tiring. But I decided to use pressure defense because I thought that we had to keep the pressure off our own defenders by pinning our opponents in their own half.

What was the result? 3 goals scored by my team with no reply. Our opponents were forced into low-percentage shots on goal that were either off target or lacking in power. One of our goals was scored by me after my teammate took the ball off the last man. The ball appeared in my path and I blasted it into the far top corner from about 5 metres.

After the 5-a-side game finished, the opposing team was conducting a postmortem. They never acknowledged the effects of our pressure defense. That amused me no end.

4-a-side after that. The fittest would win out since we were all pretty tired by then. The result? 4-1, with the only goal of our opponents scored when I stopped running back to my own half to throw a pole off the court. We scored some pretty good goals. One was a backheel by my teammate after I had passed the ball to him through his markers. I got 2 of the goals, one was a left-foot tap-in after my initial effort hit the post. The other was a simple pass into the goal after I had slipped past the last defender on their left flank.

I love scoring goals! But I love defending too!