Stats break: keep away

or: who you gonna believe? me, or your lyin’ eyes? You all probably know that I’m kind of a stats geek. And, yes, I am; I think that we can learn a lot from breaking down individual and team metrics. I like fooling with numbers. Damn, I really AM a sad sort of stats geek. […]

Thorns FC: Zzzzzzzz

The good thing about playing bad teams is that you beat them. The bad thing about playing bad teams is that it’s often difficult to figure out what to make of that. Sure, if you thrash Sky Blue FC 5-nil you’ve pretty much made the statement “We’re waaaaay better than Sky Blue FC”. Mind you, […]

Thorns FC: Protect the precious

The funnest part of the Thorns’ 3-1 loss to the Washington Spirit came at roughly 56:24 in the Yahoo! Sports stream. It wasn’t actually part of the matchplay, but, rather, during a weather delay when the Yahoo! crew dove for cover but left the microphone open. At that time we learned that we weren’t playing […]

Thorns FC: Winning Ugly

It was one ugly ass road win. It was an ugly opponent; Orlando, this season’s Sky Blue. And boy, howdy, were they ugly. Defensively porous ugly. Offensively impotent ugly. Hacky, cheap-shot-foul-y ugly. It was an ugly game. Sloppy; 63% passing, Thorns? 59% passing, Orlando? Ugly. Dirty; twenty-six fouls and only twenty-seven shots? Yep. That’s ugly. […]

Thorns roster moves – World Cup, Part 1

The Thorns’ Big News Wednesday was a slug of player personnel moves, including three replacement-player – sorry; “supplemental” player signings, two players waived, the activation of Andressinha, and the return to Portland of Hayley Raso – only now with 100% more green cards! But what does it all mean? I hear you ask… Fortunately for […]

When Sorry Won’t Do in Canada

(This is the blog post Richard mentioned in Episode 24. It is very worth a read. –Patrick) Read it and weep. This long blog post from February details allegations, with supporting detail, about misconduct by coaches in the Vancouver Whitecaps girl’s academy back in 2008. It’s such a now-familiar story that it’s hard reading: girls […]

EpIsode 24: Mixed Metaphors

It’s finally happened– World Cup call ups have happened. What will that mean for the Thorns facing Orlando? And what happened in New Jersey? Why does John use so many mixed metaphors? Join Patrick, Richard, John and (drumroll please) Shannan for the newest episode of Riveting!

Thorns FC: Sacrifice

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. “ ~ Steve Prefontaine At about the 20th minute of this match I was already thinking about this column, and the image I had in mind for the header was a flaming dumpster. Because that’s how furious I was the the Thorns had […]

Episode 23: Dr. Sinclair, PhD

We beat Orlando! (Though maybe we shouldn’t have). We drew Chicago (though maybe we shouldn’t have). What about Sky Blue?

Thorns FC: Taking the CTA to Crazytown

Whatever else you could say, you sure as hell could say “it wasn’t boring”. On Matchday 2 the Chicago Red Stars and Portland Thorns combined for eight goals – including a penalty conversion each. Exciting? It was surely that. It had everything that makes soccer a great sport. Great team and individual skill. Multiple lead […]