Real Life Interfering with the Rhinos

By: alessio | June 10th, 2008

Hi all, it’s been a while since I’ve contributed, and for that, I sincerely apologize. My internship has started in raring form and we have been absolutely busy with work for the last several weeks, and in the time I’m not there, I’m usually watching Euro2008 (forza Italia, hopefully we’ll do better next game) or watching Family Guy. If anyone would like to write an article right now on anything, contact me and I will post it under with whatever credits you’d like.

So where have we been? Well, life is getting better for us Rhinos fans. After a fairly dismal start to the season, we’ve started to get in form. As some have wisely noted, it’s because often our management picks up good players, not necessarily concerned with whether they will make a good team. We beat Portland, finally picking up the first win, but it’s still not smooth sailing. It’s a good thing the USL-1 is playoff-structured, because if it was like European leagues we might already be out of the title race.

This Sunday was a pretty crappy match against Miami. We pounded their goal, 18 shots total, not terribly great shots but shots none the less, but did not manage to get on the board. Our saving grace in this game was Scotty Vallow, who was terrific in goal as usual. Without him, it would have been 2-0 or worse. I’ll chalk this game up to the obscene 95+degree heat…amazing that only a few weeks ago it was 40s for the home opener.

Tonight we advanced in the US Open Cup…but this is nothing to celebrate. We took the lead through a penalty kick, and then they equalized in the 86th minute to send it to overtime. Who, you might ask? The perennial opponents, the Revolution? Perhaps a PDL team? No, an amateur Croatian-American soccer team from Chicago, RWB Adria. While we weren’t terribly threatened, our inability to finish off chances against a team like this worries me. We scored again through Rochester’s Didier Drogba, our resident #11 Ivorian, Hamed Diallo, clinching the game and pushing us to the 2nd round of the Open Cup. It used to be the USL-1/A-league was simple, and we showed our prowress in the Open Cup. No longer, it seems.

We finally moved out of the last place, I cannot remember the last time we were propping up the table after a few games. Despite a small turnaround, we are still a massive 15 points behind league leaders Vancouver, and 5 pts behind the last playoff spot. The good news? Our defense is great, tied for 3rd best in the league right now, but our attacking is dead last, 4 goals in 9 games, an abysmal record. There were some years when one Rhinos player would have that kind of statistic. This season needs to improve, or else it’s going to be another year wondering with such great players, what went wrong?

Rochester Rhinos: 7 points, 10/11th place 1-4-4
GF: 4
GA: 8

League average-
GF/GA: 9.63