A draw would be a positive result for the Eastern men’s soccer team as it travels to Summit League leaders, Denver, for the fifth conference matchup of the year.

However, NCAA rules and regulations are out to make sure that Saturday’s game has a winner and a loser.

According to the NCAA men’s college soccer rulebook, a regular season match is not abandoned as a tie after the full 90-minutes of regulation has elapsed; instead, two ten minute overtime periods are played before the match is allowed to remain a draw.

Overtime in regular season matches is not in line with traditional soccer standards. FIFA, the main governing body of the soccer world, mandates that organizations only play overtime when the match requires there to be a winner such as in the knockout rounds of a tournament or in a cup final.

Additionally, FIFA no longer uses sudden death, otherwise known as “golden goal,” to determine overtime winners, as the NCAA does. In the FIFA rulebook, the full overtime period is played out regardless of how many goals are scored.

“I’m not a big fan of the overtime,” Eastern head coach Adam Howarth said. “I think there’s a couple ways to go about it.”   

This season, Eastern has played in five overtime matches and lost or drawn all but one of those games.

“Personally, I don’t like it just because you lose, it’s tough to get the guys up,” Howarth said.  “If you win, it’s great but either way if I had the choice, I’d probably get away (from) it.”

Howarth said in an interview after his team lost in overtime to the University of Illinois-Chicago that he felt the squad had deserved the draw but the rules said the game would go to overtime where the Panthers lost in the 103^rd minute.

“If you do choose to play overtime let’s play the full overtime rather than the sudden-death,” Howarth said. “That way the team that fully deserves to win the game will win the game. I think sometimes a freak accident or a fluke goal can happen in an overtime and maybe (the winning team is) not deserving of what happens.”

Two of the Panthers overtime contests have been during Summit League games, one against IUPUI and the other against Oral Roberts. However, in League play, Howarth understands the need for an overtime to separate teams.

“I understand it’s tough because you have to have a deciding factor between teams because it is not like the English Premier League where everybody is playing each team twice,” Howarth said.

However, the Eastern alum would rather the NCAA mimic FIFA regulations on overtime. That would involve playing both periods of extra time regardless of goals scored and allowing most tied games in the regular season end as a draw.

“If we had to keep it, I think I’d rather play the two full (ten-minute periods) or two full (15-minute periods),” he said.

Howarth said the rules are meant to determine a winner and a loser in most games, but sometimes teams just need the benefit of a tie.

The Panthers travel to Denver this weekend hoping to get as much as they can out of the match.  Therefore a draw is a positive result on the road against the league leaders.

Another draw for Eastern would put the team in a spot to earn a berth into the Summit League postseason tournament.

Michael Spencer can be reached at 581-2812 or at tmspencer2@eiu.edu.