Wednesday, August 8, 2007

First-year wonder

I'm not sure exactly what a Railhawk is. Maybe it's a bird that takes cross-country trips on trains or perhaps it's a hawk that lives near railroad lines. Whatever it is, it's certainly inspired the first-year expansion Carolina Railhawks. Earlier this year, the Railhawks celebrated their first win in franchise history and now the club is setting a high standard for future editions to live up to as Carolina has advanced to the US Open Cup semifinals with a 1-0 win over Richmond.

On paper, the victory should have happened. Carolina is a USL-1 side and Richmond is in USL-2. However, Richmond has been around quite a bit longer than Carolina and won the USL-2 last year. Also, Richmond has had success in the US Open Cup before. Richmond won the whole thing in 1995, the last year before MLS clubs participated, and Tuesday was the fourth quarterfinal match in club history.

According to reports, Richmond had the better of play but Carolina prevailed nonetheless. There's really no limits to how far the Railhawks can advance. Few expected them to beat four-time champions Chicago and now that the final is within sights anything can happen.

Here's a match report from the Cary News.

1 comment:

Jesse Erdmann said...

To my mind this is actually a bit of an upset. Richmond was a USL-D1 team prior to last season and not a bad one at that. Meanwhile, Carolina started the season reasonably well but has faltered of late falling all of the way to tenth in D1. Plus, they have the next to worst goal scoring record in the league.

Carolina got by Chicago because the Fire were really in a funk and were a bit caught by surprise. How the MLS teams get caught off guard by USL-1 teams seemingly every year is beyond me, but it keeps happening.

Assuming New England gets by Harrisburg and takes Carolina seriously, the Revs should shutout the RailHawks.