This last Saturday, the Lexington Horsemen played their second game of the season against the Pirates from Peoria, IL. The game was all about defense. It was great to see a game with such a low score in a sport that usually warrants scores of more than 100 for each team. The Horsemen are prized for their defense, and introduce the starters one at a time at the beginning of the game, when usually teams focus on their offensive starters. On Saturday though, the defenses on both teams were extremely tough which made for an interesting game with lots of surprises.

The game started out with the Horsemen leading 7 to 6 in the first quarter. The next quarter, the Pirates fought hard and scored two more touchdowns to the Horsemen’s one, making the score 14 to 20 going in to halftime. At this point of the game I happen to be sitting in a seat next to some people who were passing through Lexington and decided to catch a game. One of them asked “Aren’t these games supposed to have ridiculously high scores, with scoring back and forth all game?” It hadn’t really dawned on me until that point. This game was going at about the same pace as an NFL game, but with a much smaller field. That just pays tribute to the amazing defenses on both sides of the field. Although there was some scoring, it was nothing compared to an average AFL game. The scores stayed low in the third quarter as well, with the Horsemen getting 7 more points, and Peoria missing another extra point to get 6 more points, making it still a close game at 21 to 26. Unfortunately it was the fourth quarter where the Horsemen came undone. There were a few mistakes made, which is all Peoria needed to steal the game away. The Pirates won the game, 46 to 28. A lot of the Pirates success came from the outstanding job that number 7 on their team, Kofi Amoah did at Defensive Back and on special teams. It made one wonder if he was drinking the same water as another great Illinois defender, Brian Urlacher.

I made a panoramic of a series of photos I took from one of the corners on the floor. Click the images below to view the extremely LARGE version. Who knows, maybe you can pick yourself out in the crowd.

As mentioned during last week’s recap, I was working to get access to the floor to snap some more photos of the game. The Horsemen staff was more than accommodating, so I was able to take a whole slew of photos from the sidelines of the game. I went ahead and uploaded them all to our Flickr account and placed them in a Horsemen collection along with a few of the photos I snapped from last week. Here are some of the ones you can find in that collection.

The next home game for the Lexington Horsemen is May 10 against Mahoning Valley Thunder at 7:30. I will be field-side snapping some more pictures for the blog. Be sure to bring your game face and your cowbell and you may find your way into one of our game albums or even in the recap.