Post Mortem Coverage of Amesbury vs Newburyport Game

November 23, 2007

Here are a few more links to articles in the Daily News of Newburyport, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald reporting on Amesbury’s major upset in defeating the Newburyport Clipper’s and clinching the Cape Ann Small Division title and a playoff berth in the process.

Boston Globe: Amesbury Enjoys A Surprise Berthday

Boston Herald: Amesbury Capitalizes

Daily News of Newburyport: Amesbury Clinches First-Ever Post Season Berth

Here are my thoughts on the game:

Intangibles: When they introduced the Newburyport Girls Soccer Championship team to the crowd before the game, it looked like a good harbinger of things to come for the Clippers as the girls team is the penultimate example of mental toughness and how to keep your focus as demonstrated in their march to the Massachusetts Division 3 Girls Soccer State Championship this fall.

The mental toughness factor is huge in team sports and this factor played out in Amesbury’s favor yesterday. The Amesbury team played with far more emotion and intensity throughout the game than Newburyport showed.

Sloppy Play on Special Teams and the Offensive Side of the Ball: There were a lot of sloppy plays by Newburyport in both halves of the game. The Newburyport defense, however, was solid and dominant in the second half. Poor special teams play dogged the Clippers all day and put Amesbury in good field position for most of the game. Newburyport had far too many “3rd and long” sitauations that they couldn’t convert throughout the game and especially in the second half.

Lack of Big Plays: Amesbury had all of the big plays and managed to keep the few drives going that they needed to win the game. Of course, when your opposition turns the ball over five times and commits a bunch of penalties, you don’t really need to mount many successul drives to win the game. If Newburyport had been able to convert on a few of their 3rd down plays it could have been a different outcome.

Joe Clancy’s Absence: Regardless of what people say, his absence was a huge factor in this game. Newburyport sputtered on offense when Joe Clancy wasn’t in as the quaterback, it was like night and day!

Much of the sloppiness in the Clipper’s offense was due to having to play without an experienced quaterback in their most important game of the year. Newburyport was put in this position due to a very questionable suspension decision on Joe Clancy (there are lots of rumors about what happened and who was involved) that occurred at the Lynnfield game and that did have a major impact on yesterday’s game.