Still in search of their first victory following their promotion to Ontario Premier League 1 and trailing the South Simcoe Rovers 1-0 at the break Saturday night at the James Jerome Sports Complex, the Sudbury Cyclones were in need of a spark.

And while a pair of goals from Jaiden Santos just four minutes apart early in the second half could easily be highlighted as a make or break sequence for the homeside, there was a sense of a hopeful inevitability to what would finish as a 2-1 win for the Cyclones.

“We all kind of agreed that we were the better team,” noted coach Giuseppe Politi of the half-time chat that resulted in an absolutely dominant performance from his troops in the opening 20 to 25 minutes of the final half of the encounter. “We expressed to the players the importance of what was on the line – but we knew we had the ability and the manpower to turn things around.”

Truth be told, the team had not played badly in the opening forty-five.

A ball played into the box was greeted by an extremely rare mishap on the part of Sudbury all-star keeper Connor Vande Weghe, the loose ball deposited in the back of the net by Rovers’ attacker Theo Hampton as the undeniable backbone of the Cyclones defense scampered to try and recover the bouncing sphere.

With possession numbers generally favouring the northern squad, there was certainly a sense within the crowd assembled on a very pleasant May evening that the game was still well within reach. And for his part, Vande Weghe came through with a pair of key saves late in the half, with Timi Aliu denied on a qualify effort at the other end of the pitch as well.

“We had created some scoring chances – but there were other things,” said Politi. “The opponent was making some mistakes that teams at the top of the table don’t make: unforced errors, the ball mishandled out of bounds. We were not spent the game chasing the ball around.”

With little to no change of formation coming out of the half, the Cyclones inserted Gianni Bordieri and Daniel Alexa at the half, the latter blasting a wicked shot off the crossbar as he and his teammates pressed aggressively from the start of minute forty-six.

“It was important that we have a quick start to the second half to set the tone,” said Politi. By the 56th minute, the tables had been turned, with Sudbury now leading by a goal and Simcoe County clearly on their heels.

While some thought might have been given to “peeling the paint off the walls” in the Cyclones room at the half, the more restrained approach taken by coach Politi, on this day, certainly paid dividends.

“We decided that we were not going to put our heads down and we were going to apply as much pressure as possible and play with a bit more urgency,” said midfielder Musa Joof, a 25 year-old native of Toronto who joins the team after spending some time with the Cambrian Shield OCAA crew.

Having dropped four straight games by a single goal, including three by a final score of 1-0, the Cyclones had ample reason to feel sorry for themselves – even before the season started. “We knew that we did not have a great start and it was obviously unfortunate with the storm and the dome collapsing,” said Joof.

“But we also knew that when we started to focus on what we could control, that we would be ready to turn the season around.”

With a regular season record of 1-4-0, the Cyclones will now spend a couple of weekends on the road, facing St Catharines Roma (1-3-0) on May 23rd and battling Oakville SC (2-1-0) on May 31st. Intent on moving up from a bottom two ranking in the league of 12 teams in order to avoid relegation, Politi stressed that this is not at all an unreasonable ask.

“Everybody is settling in now; there is an identity to the team,” he said. “At the OPL1 level, we should be competing every single game.”