Well, fuckadoo.
Everyone involved walked away from last weekend’s 1-2 loss to Washington with regrets.
The club because they missed an opportunity to jump into second on the table as well as the humiliation of coming apart in the final half hour after more-or-less controlling the match until then.
Our punters because, as we do, they all believed in our club’s victory. Barcasiempre nailed the Wilson PK so got the “assist bonus”, and everyone else called Wilson as the Thorns scorer. We even had a red card, but nobody foresaw substitute Andi Sullivan being boneheaded enough to pick up two yellows in second half injury time.
Fun points ended in a three-way tie, so I arbitrarily chose to split the points that way, too.
So here’s where we stand after Matchday 23:
| Player | Latest Round | Cumulative Score |
| PTFC Dave | 2 | 24 |
| Ken | 2 | 29 |
| Barcasiempre | 3 | 23 |
| Mi-So-Thorny | 0 | 4 |
| Irene | 2 | 2 |
How all this works:
Before the upcoming Thorns match add a comment to this post. As your first line, put your predicted result, for example 1-3 Thorns.
In the body of your comment, start with the goals and assists, like so:
Wilson (Fleming)
Reyes (Free kick)
Moultrie (Unassisted)
Rodman (PK)
Next, name the first yellow card recipient: Sophia Wilson
Then a red card. (NOTE: no points awarded for correctly calling a red-card-free match, so take a guess.) Trinity Rodman for mimicking mooning the referee after getting an undeserved yellow.
Make your fun prediction,and give a “thumbs up” to anybody else’s prediction that tickles your fancy: “Ryan gets the start against her former club. She gets through 70 minutes without fouling her former teammates until she can’t take it anymore. She pushes over Perry, gives Muller a wedgie, gives Arnold a noogie, then flips off the Riveters and runs out of Providence Park, never to be seen again. The ref issues a red card, which she later contests, and loses.” (h/t to ABell4)
Scoring:
· Correct score: 5 points
· Correct result (draw/win/loss): 3 points
· Each clean sheet: 2 points
· Each goal-scorer: 1 point
· Each FK/PK/assist/lack of assist: 1 point
· Goal/assist bonus: 1 point
· Player with the first yellow card of the match: 1 point
· A player with a red card: 1 point
· Most liked/most outrageously accurate prediction: 2 points
Some ground rules and explanations/clarifications (the fine print):
Comments must be posted before kickoff, but you can edit or amend an earlier prediction right up to the starting whistle.
Keep your scoreline predictions realistic. No crazy scores just to pad out your odds of getting goals and assists.
The goal/assist bonus is an additional point if you predict the correct scorer and assistant on the same goal, for example, you say Castellanos scores from a Moultrie assist and that is exactly what happens.
Be clear whether you think a goal will be unassisted, assisted, or from a PK/FK. Unassisted = no assist, run of play; Assisted = player who got the assist; PK/FK = dead ball, not in run of play. FK includes olimpicos from corners. No entry means unassisted.
First yellow means just that: the player – the first player and only the first player – who receives a yellow. Not the first player on each team. If more than one player listed as “first yellow” all the punter’s predictions for that category will be voided.
As we discussed in the Washington piece, tomorrow the Thorns begin the Tomato Can Trench Run towards the Playoff Exhaust Port. Instead of TIE fighters and laser cannon that means that six of the final seven matches are against opponents currently not just below the red line but tussling for – or, in the case of tomorrow’s visitor Chicago, clinging to – the Wooden Spoon.
The 2026 Red Stars are a fucking joke.
Dead last on the table, 16 points of the 69 possible (5-1-17), 13GF, 53GA, an appalling -40GD. The Chicago Story took a dark turn in 2021-22 when the fuckery of then-head coach Rory Dames exploded into the press.
Said fuckery, which would be sadly familiar to Thorns fans who had followed the NWSL from before 2015, included professional and sexual criming about which the then-owner Arnim Whistler knew about and covered up (sound familiar?).
Dames was fired and banished from professional WoSo, Whistler sold the club to “a group of Chicago business leaders led by Laura Ricketts”. This clusterfuck has proceeded to mismanage the club (including a name change from the “Red Stars” moniker that went back to the WPS league era because, supposedly, the fucking nitwits thought that the “Red Star” was the soviet symbol rather than a reference to the stars on the Chicago city flag) to what an FAA investigator would term a rapid “controlled flight into terrain” i.e. a fucking crash-and-burn.
So tomorrow should be a stroll, a casual stop to play a points-dispensing tomato can and bag some easy points.
Can the Thorns make that harder than it should be? Sure they can! The club is notorious for playing down to their opponents!
Will they?
We’ll see.
(FYI, the match is here, but if you’re looking for the stream it’s on something called “Roku”. Yeah, me neither.
Last Meeting: May 3, 2026, Martin Stadium, Evanston, Illinois, 0-2 Thorns win
- The Thorns Prediction Game: MD 24 – CHI v POR - September 12, 2026
- Thorns FC: Things Fall Apart - September 10, 2026
- The Thorns Prediction Game: MD 23 WAS v POR - September 5, 2026
