Retro Day Sees Rowdies Sent Packing, Again

Retro Day at Swangard brought the rain and three points for the Whitecaps in a game which wasn’t a classic, but certainly had more goalmouth action than some of our recent games.

The weather put a little dampener on the Southside’s dressing up (see Photos) but kudos to those that made the effort. Even Tampa Bay got in on the act by resurrecting Gary Coleman to turn out at number 7 for them. Well, Different Strokes was a top rated show back in 1979 after all, so it did seem only right. Mr Drummond would have been proud.

We thought that one guy at the game at particular had made a real effort with his old fashioned clothes that probably weren’t even fashionable when they were new, old style haircut, flared trousers, unbuttoned hideously patterned shirt, large medallion hanging down and backward views, verging on the little bit slow. It was like the last thirty years hadn’t happened for him. Turns out he hadn’t dressed up for Retro Day at all and it was just a Timbers fan up on vacation from Portland.

Martin Nash’s penalty on the stroke of half time was the difference between the teams, after Scott Buete had handled a Marcus Haber cutback.

Vancouver should have wrapped things up in the second half when Philippe Davies had a great chance just after the hour mark, but his weakly hit effort from an Ansu Toure cutback should have found the back of the net but instead found the arms of Rowdies goalkeeper Daryl Sattler.

Tampa are your untypical expansion side in that they’re actually doing well in their first season and they will feel aggrieved at not getting anything out of the game and they certainly had their chances, especially in the last ten minutes of the game when the Caps’ Luca Bellisomo saw red for his second bookable offence.

Aaron Wheeler and Aaron King both missed open goal opportunities for Tampa in the second half. Must be something about that name. It must mean “make an arse out of it” in Latin or something.

Jay Nolly and his backline were immense again in keeping yet another clean sheet, but also yet again, our weak attacking threat was shown up. I hadn’t actually noticed that Marcus Haber was playing till he was down our end in the second half.

Somehow we keep grinding out the points and still keep atop that NASL division. It’s not pretty. It’s not fun. But much like that fat chick you pick up as the nightclub closes, it gets the job done (to paraphrase a famous Ian Holloway quote!).

Having seen more than my fair share of shit football over the years, I don’t care how we get those three points, just as long as we do and we win the Championship.

C’mon the Caps.