United slammed by Colo Colo, coach PORTAGE DAILY GRAPHIC

BY RYAN DIXON
Thursday June 23, 2005

Portage la Prairie — It was ugly. Real ugly.Southport United’s gruesome 6-1 loss to Colo Colo in Manitoba Major Soccer League Fourth Division action last night at Southport Recreation Centre had both South-port’s coach and team captain questioning the commitment of more than one United player.“We’re lacking determination, we’re lacking effort,” said a visibly-frustrated Karl Seidlitz, sideline boss for United (1-4). “They’re just going through the motions, and that’s exactly how I feel. The effort is not there. Period.“We have the speed to burn this team. We can run around them if we want to. They just don’t want to.”Captain Glenn McCulloch was shaking his head, too.“It makes you not want to come out a few times, when you’ve got four or five guys putting in a full effort and a few that, if they don’t get the ball on their foot, they don’t go for it,” McCulloch said.“It doesn’t seem like they’re putting in a full amount of effort. It destroys the team.”The carnage came quickly last night, as Colo Colo (3-1) hopped out to a 1-0 lead mere minutes into the game on Dave Epp’s brilliant header off a direct kick.Colo Colo’s James Friesen made it 2-0 by converting a penalty kick after Southport’s Pe-ter Reimer was nailed for an infraction in-side the 18-yard box.Both Friesen and Epp would add markers in the opening half’s dying minutes, and the rout was on.Seidlitz had a few choice words for his club at halftime.“I stated to them that if they’re only going to play half a game, I will become a halftime coach. I will only show up for half a game if they want me to,” he said bluntly, addressing a tendency on United’s part to only put in 45 minutes of work.“I sometimes put my family aside to do this for them, and I don’t need to do that. I don’t expect them to win all the time. That would be unrealistic for any team, but at least put in the effort.”United’s Michael Chaves (fourth of the season) did break the goose egg with a goal in the second half, after Colo Colo’s Ian Goodall-George had made it 5-0 for the visitors.Tony Frias, who McCulloch thought dominated the pitch, scored the final Colo Colo tally.“One guy destroyed us in the middle,” McCulloch said of Frias.“It took four guys to try and stop him and he’d pass it to one of the guys that was wide open and they’d finish.”Friesen said Colo Colo exploited a weakness it perceived in Southport’s defence.“They had one sweeper in the back instead of playing four across so (Colo Colo keeper Warren Beleyowski) would kick it to one of the sides and we had a lot of two-on-ones right at the beginning and it seemed to work for us,” he said.As for how to right the Southport ship, McCulloch is at a loss.“I have no idea,” the captain said, adding on paper, United has all the makings of a great club, but just cannot put it together.“We’ve tried leading by example and a few of us putting in as much as we can and running our butts off, and it just doesn’t seem to help.“It just seems to put us more out of position and then we have to run twice as hard to get back. It’s frustrated us all year so far.”United will be looking for a monumentally different result when it travels to Winnipeg on June 28 to battle the Rangers.The club will not revisit the scene of last night’s debacle until its hosts Ragnarok at Southport Recreation Centre on July 17.