The Royals left it late to beat the devil fish last night as an injury-time strike by Stan the man saw them home 2-1.

Again the Royals were guilty of missing chances to seal a win over a frankly disappointing Pirhanas side, who clearly have been struggling without their talasmanic longtime coach Jon Hall, and have not played as well as coach Leroi would have wanted them to.

From the word go the signs were on the wall for the visitors as the hosts should have scored in the openeing minutes of the game, and the posts received a good rattling in the 22nd minute as a shot narrowly failed to find the target.

The deadlock was finally broken when following a good move Stan the man found space behind the aquatic backline, and pulled back a deadly cross that found Richard Edgar just outside the 18 ready to bury the ball.

The Piranhas huffed & puffed all night, but like the big bad wolf they failed to blow the house down, till our keepers teflon gloves spilled a cross right at a striker's feet, and even he couldn't miss the gaping net to equalize.

But cometh the extra-time cometh the man, Stan the man, who rightly finished the season for the Royals with yet another excellent team goal that saw us pick up our 6th win of the season to finish a credible 6-6-4 with 22pts, 5th in the table.

Kings of the old Dominion indeed !

Kaweesi's a good finisher... something the Piranhas lacked this year up top. Mamadou would've led the PDL in offsides individually if it were a stat category kept by USL.

Congrats on the win (although, with as many teams dropping out from Virginia this past offseason alone, being Kings of the Old Dominion is like kissing your sister, but I digress)... One thing I was uncertain about something that you may be able to answer, Scrumpy. I heard that the referee indicated two mins. of stoppage time in the 2nd half but it sounded like the length didn't match the indication of time allowance. I wasn't there so all I have to go on was word of mouth but do you think about two minutes had elapsed when Kaweesi notched the match-winner?

Must admit, I hope he don't time his eggs by that watch. It was certainly in the '2nd minute' when Stan scored, and all the time your side had was for a long range effort from the kick-off before the final whistle sounded.

Sad thing about the PDL for me is that you get 3 games with Jim Sadowski and only one with Moo Hackett in a season, we need to promote the good refs, last night's was ok, he had a few bizarre moments, and for a longtime we all felt he had lost the pea in his whistle as he never blew for anything.

I was sat in front of some relatives of your #18 with the half a beard, now he deserved a card for the facial growth if nothing else !

I heard from a source of a source, if that makes any sense, and just wanted the opinion of someone at the game... Figured the timing was ok.

As for referee assigning, I have little sympathy for USL teams and if/when they complain about lackluster officiating. You get what you pay for, and the league rates are just not up to snuff to retain the services of the best referees in USSF in my opinion. Still, many teams guff or even complain about the officiating structure from mileage rules to league standards for officials. Some don't understand why the league or assignor(s) insist on travelling officials to some areas where there may already be folks just as qualified (if not more) to do the game without incurring travel expenditures.

I have a bad feeling that there will come a day where either there's not enough qualified referees in the pool to assign from that they may have to lower their standards, OR the referees come together and lockout. Either would reflect very poorly on the game. Fact of the matter is many qualified referees no longer do USL games and instead just stick with college and even high school because schools pay better (depending on the college conference, it can be A LOT more money than USL) to deal with less head-cases and nowhere near as much diving.

Moo Hackett, while on the subject of officials, worked the middle in one of the Piranhas' PDL games this season and performed very well... she's a quality referee.

They always saddle Moo with two linesmen who are 6'+ tall !

For me the best two refs in Va are her & Kai Goodrich.