Over & back

by Steve De Rose
Published on February 1, 2001 under National Professional Soccer League (NPSL)

by Steve De Rose

Welcome, folks. This is Steve De Rose. As this is my first column for OurSports Central, I respectfully feel a terse introduction is necessary. I have been attending indoor soccer matches since 1980. In Autumn 1987, I published two issues of a 'zine which covered the sport, in both the Major Indoor Soccer League and the American Indoor Soccer Association. My first professional assignment was the 1990 A.I.S.A. All-Star Game in Detroit, MI. Since then, I have attended and/or covered indoor soccer matches in most cities where they have been played, in the entire panoply of leagues. The best description of me was uttered back in 1996, by indoor soccer veteran Larry Sunderland: "He's seen more games than I've played."

My scribings are not limited to indoor soccer. I have been honored to have been one of the voters for the Futbol dé Primera Honda U.S. Player of the Year since its inception in 1990. (The 2000 recipient of the award was Claudio Reyna.) I have covered the 1999 & 2000 Lamar Hunt U. S. Open Cup Finals. In January of 1998, I became a founding member of the On-Line Soccer Writers' Cooperative. It is a repository for electronic journalists whose stories initially appear on World-Wide Web sites (such as OurSports Central), Usenet newsgroups, and/or E-Mail lists. My previous efforts for the SportsBytes E-Zine are archived on-line in the "soccer" wing of my WWW site.

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Let's get to the action in the National Professional Soccer League.

In upcoming news: I shall venture out from behind this keyboard this weekend to attend the Cleveland CRUNCH's home games on Sunday afternoon versus the Philadelphia Kixx and Tuesday morning against the Buffalo Blizzard. I must inform you that morning games are not my style. However, in this instance, I should be all right. This will enable me to fly back to Chicago by the end of the afternoon.

For as long as I can remember, one of the league's ‘in-phrases' has been, "If it's February, Harrisburg must be on the road." The Heat have another close-in tussle at the Baltimore Blast this Saturday night. The Blast will be handicapped by having played at Buffalo the previous evening. The Kixx, when they arrive to play the Crunch on Sunday afternoon, will have competed the previous evening at home versus the Toronto Thunderhawks. Gary Hindley's charges will move on from Philadelphia to visit the Blizzard on Sunday afternoon.

In the National Conference, the Milwaukee Wave and Wichita Wings will have a home-&-home set, with Wichita hosting on Friday night and Milwaukee hosting on Sunday afternoon. A key game at the foot of the division will be on Friday night, when the 5-18 Detroit Rockers host the 6-15 Kansas City Attack.

I was in Detroit this past weekend, viewing Rockers' home games at both their primary home field in Plymouth (Compuware® Sports Arena) and at the Palace of Auburn Hills. This past Sunday's Rockers versus Blizzard match, from the Palace, shall be shown on FOX Sports Net Detroit (Dish Network® ch. 430; DirecTV® ch. 320) on Saturday at 3:00 p.m. ET. The Rockers have a good assemblage of players; such that you really must wonder how they can be only 5-18. The bulk of the problem has been a lack of quality defenders. This ultimately depressed both the psyché and the points-against-average of their goalkeepers. The Rockers may have solved this last aspect by backing up a bit. On December 28, they re-signed Alan Placek, who had played in twenty games over two seasons for the Rockers before signing this past summer with the Mid-Michigan Bucks of the United Soccer League. The Bucks, a Division IV side, pulled off the most stunning result of the 2000 Lamar Hunt U. S. Open Cup tournament when on June 14, they traveled to Foxboro, MA. to play Major League Soccer's New England Revolution and defeated them by 1-0. The Bucks were eliminated in the next round by MLS' Miami Fusion, an eventual finalist. Placek has compiled a 3-2 record since joining Detroit and signed to a contract for the rest of the season. He played well in both of the matches which I viewed. I expect him to get the overwhelming majority of the starts in the remaining Rockers' games.

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On Friday night, the Rockers defeated the Toronto Thunderhawks by 12-9. After the game, I spoke briefly with T-hawks' coach Gary Hindley. The T-hawks' problem has not been on the field where they are 12-9, and atop the National Conference, but in the arena. Toronto's attendances at the Mississauga Hershey Centre have been dreadful. By the way, The League insisted that the franchise be labeled "Toronto," but the team does play in Mississauga.

"Is the problem due to regional rivalry?", I asked Hindley. Will Mississaugans not support a new franchise which bears the name of a city to which it feels superior and/or will people from Toronto not voyage out to Mississauga for anything which is not ice hockey? The equivalent for U.S.A.-based readers would be a franchise which plays in Piscataway, New Jersey labelling itself "New York".

Hindley felt that the snag was mostly in the late start for the marketing activities of the club. He expressed that the owners were committed to soccer, and that we all know that attendances in November and December are never as good as they are in February and March.

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The other off-field rhubarb is occurring in Buffalo. If you have spent any time at all here in the soccer rubric of OurSports Central, you have seen articles about the Buffalo Blizzard scribed by Mr. Robert J. Summers of the Buffalo News. You should have noticed an acerbic tone in the stories. In particular, if you read Mr. Summers' mid-season "report card" on the entire operation of the Blizzard, wherein no aspect garnered higher than a grade of "C", and by the end of which, he was challenging the continued existence of the franchise.

It has been written that there is no such thing as bad coverage, other than no coverage. But the mindset of Mr. Summers has drawn attention from both the Blizzard as well as League Commissioner Steve Ryan. Blizzard Media Relations Director Darceé Edrozo informed me that the Blizzard front office and Commissioner Ryan are having meetings with the editors of the Buffalo News. According to her, both the sports editor and the newspaper's general editor are antagonistic to soccer. For the many strides made in vanquishing soccer-bashers, it takes a incident like this to point out that some "dinosaurs" die hard.

The NPSL All-Star Game will be held in Buffalo on Wednesday, February 14.

Steve De Rose, a former member of the now defunct SportsBytes, joined OurSports Central as our primary NPSL correspondent. Steve, a longtime viewer of the indoor game, is a founding member of the On-Line Soccer Writers' Cooperative, a repository for electronic journalists whose stories initially appear on World-Wide Web sites.

National Professional Soccer League Stories from February 1, 2001

• Over & back - OSC Original by Steve De Rose

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.