• Voices From Soccer's North •
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Maybe it was the barometric pressure, but the Loons supporters were very quiet tonight, with chant-less stretches of silence. The KC supporters were louder. This was very unusual for DCs and TNEs who are usually non-stop loud. Was there a silent protest about something?
Yeah, I noticed that there were quiet stretches. Especially at the beginning of the match it seemed uncharacteristically quiet. I could hear the “When the Loons go marching”, but barely and it’s normally pretty clear from where we sit a little past the midfield line on the opposite end from the supporters. The SKC travelers were loud and proud, but they were only louder for short stretches. Props to them for making some noise. We had a few good MNUFCs going, but then the tempo seemed to break down. The crowd was good though and we met several local folks who had never been to a match before, so it was encouraging.
I hope we stay at the 22k+ levels throughout next year. We are firmly in 10th place in the league for attendance and just behind the Red Bulls with a 25k capacity stadium. Maybe McGuire will up the seating to 24k if we keep turning out – it would be great to see us pack 24k into the new stadium. That would put us into the top 5 or 6 in the league.
In my section, 139, the crowd continues to be very late arriving. People just aren’t all there or settled in until after 20 minutes.
Spork theatrics and time wasting also seemed to sap the atmosphere at times.
Solid effort from the team, but not spectacular. It would have been easy to break in the face of the late KC pressure, but they held firm. Getting a goal was a monumental task and KC was very disciplined. It was not easy to stretch them and that left little space for us to move and attack. I’m not sure the 4-4-2 was the best choice, but given the personnel we had available, it might have been the safest choice.
KC held Ramirez and Danladi in check, but we really didn’t try to stretch the field much until the middle of the second half. I think Heath waited a little too long to play his subs. 10 min earlier would have been better. The team played really well defensively and the bounces went our way. We struggled to penetrate the KC lines all night.
I thought Greenspan had a pretty solid game and I don’t think the two yellows were very fair to him. Props to Rubio and Blessing as their flop game would have made Dwyer proud.
I thought Martin played fairly well given the pressure, but Ibson was held more in check than I thought he should have been. Finlay and Ibarra struggled to find space and even when we overlapped, it seemed like we only played it when it felt “safe” to do so until the last 20 min or so of the match.
But, considering we were missing some key players, it wasn’t a bad result and encouraging that our depth isn’t nearly as thin as earlier in the year.
I thought I would dislike SKC less with Dwyer gone, but it looks like Rubio and Blessing are able replacements in more ways than scoring.
As frustrating as the Spork antics were, lets not lose sight of denying them three points that would have put them only a point off the top of the West with a game in hand. Turns out they could have used the time that they wasted in the middle of the 2nd half. No use in scheming to get a guy sent off when you’ve wasted all of the time that you could have used to take advantage.
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