If Republic FC wins out, it is impossible for Orange County, El Paso, and Austin to catch them in the Western Conference standings. To secure fourth, the Indomitable Club still needs Real Monarchs to lose or draw to Austin and/or Phoenix before the SRFC season finale at Monarchs next Saturday... What about the other guys? Orange County SC (13-10-9, 48 pts) fell to Real Monarchs on Wednesday, 2-0...Typically OCSC is on the other end of these clean sheet statistics, given the team has shut out their opposition four times over their last seven matches. Orange County has blanked their opponents 10 times this season, good enough for fourth-best in the Western Conference. Defense is the strength of OCSC but the SoCal club has plenty of goal-scoring prowess. Leading the frontline for Orange County is Michael Seaton with 12 goals on the season and hot on his tail is Darwin Jones with 11. The team-leader in assists is Harry Forrester with six while Aodhan Quinn, Jones and Seaton all follow his lead with five apiece.
Kind of an outside shot at making a home playoff game. But I prefer Papa Murphy Park HD over the ESPN+ app, so lets git ‘er done Republic!!
Sooooo, anyone understand why Taintor's goal was disallowed? I can't imagine the center ref called an offside. Must have been a foul but I sure didn't see it. That was the turning moment of the game and hella frustrating. Edit: Pisses me off that neither the game highlights nor the team's twitter feed has a replay. I guess USL exerts MLS-style imperialism. The club's game summary does say the center ref called an offside (ridiculous to overrule the AR).
There were a few things this referee did that left me wondering. At first I thought the Taintor goal was ruled offside by the CR, but he never raised his arm for an indirect free kick on the ensuing restart, so I'm not sure what the call was. He called a foul on Skundrich for contact with their GK right on the goal line, and then let the GK take the free kick near the PK mark. Referee quality went all to hell when they went away from the yellow jerseys. /rant off
I watched a recording of the game and want to revise my first comment. It wasn't craptastic. This team plays hard and gave everything they had to try to win. They just don't have enough to get it done against the better teams. I can live with that. I wish the officiating would give the same effort.