“We Don’t Miss You Anymore”

By: Ian | September 15th, 2008

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: L.A. will always be our most hated enemies and number one rivals. That all being said, we have a new rivalry on our hands, ladies and gentleman, and Saturday night confirmed it. The Houston Dynamo have found a place of revulsion and loathing in the hearts 0f Quakes fans everywhere.

It was always bound to end this way really. Once the Quakes were confirmed as coming back to the league, most people predicted a kind of “friendly rivalry” developing between the new and old Quakes. That was always a delusion. When such strong emotions are invested in something, you can’t just turn them off or tone them down to a lukewarm, happy medium, instead, they can only transform into strong emotions of a different sort. After living and bleeding with those ex-Quakes through trials and tribulations, when suddenly they score on you, its a betrayal. Add to that fact the lingering trauma and hard feelings attached to the “theft” of our team, and the two cups won by “our players”, and you have a recipe for fireworks.

Believe me, I know, because at the first preseason game against Houston, I clapped politely at the returning Quakes players in those horrid orange jerseys. Once they scored against us, I was calling them “traitors”. I’m sure it works the other way too. For those ex-Quakes, it must be hard to be heckled by those who once supported you.

But that’s not enough, every rivalry needs some good villains too. In this case, we have a trio.

Exhibit A: Brian Ching. Hacks Cochrane in the first meeting of the season. Then celebrates his goal this past Saturday by running up to the Quakes fans in a blatant display of “f off”.

Exhibit B: Kei Kamara. Oh yes, the newest of ex-Quakes. I defended Kamara longer and harder than most, and even when he left for Houston, I had no hard feelings. After all, it’s not his fault that he couldn’t hit a luxury condo in downtown San Jose with a tennis ball. But he had to run his mouth about “wishing he was in Houston earlier”. Add to that a healthy helping of diving, arguing with every official in the zip code, and getting into it with his old teammates, he took the lion’s share of the fans’ ire (including a classic “we started winning when you left” song).

Exhibit C: Eddie Robinson. This was always his fate given his tendency to be a first-rate hack. I overlooked these tendencies when he was a Quake, because he seemed to bleed blue. But let’s face it, over the last couple of years in Houston, he has become less of the elite defender he once was (he was awesome in 2005, taking the ball effortlessly away from Eddie Johnson on one memorable occasion) and more of the outright thug. To top it all off, he throws up four fingers to the Casbah after a round of heckling on Saturday. The audacity of this guy! Did he forget that two of those rings were won in a Quakes jersey?

So there you have it, a trio of villains and a new rivalry getting more intense with every game. Fouls and hard challenges were not in short supply, and the crowd was way more abrasive than normal. Hey, I’m grateful, there’s nothing better than a good rivalry. There are exceptions to my hate, however. I can never find it in myself to heckle Craig Waibel (an honorary Quake forever), Brian Mullan (the consummate professional), or Pat Onstad (the lovable Canuck).

As for the game itself, a draw was a fair result. The Quakes did themselves no favors by playing the ball in the air, as the Dynamo have a marked height advantage. Our strength is when we keep the ball on the carpet. Our early struggles this season were down to the fact that we didn’t have the skill to play on the ground, nor the size to play in the air (with our “target man” being the aforementioned Kamara). However, Houston were pressing heavily (a trademark of Yallop-Kinnear football), forcing the Quakes into long balls. Our main offensive engine, Huckerby, found himself faced with two or three defenders every time he received the ball. Yallop will have to to adjust the gameplan for next Saturday, when the rivalry continues in Houston, in what will be the toughest game in our final home stretch to the playoffs.

Look for a review of where we stand in the playoff race on Wednesday, with a match preview to follow.