Who's Your Pappa?

An ugly game but 3 points.  I'll take it.  The Rapids really looked rusty out there Saturday night (or maybe it was the heat) but luckily the Fire is a bad team and looked worse.

General Impressions:

• While we got lucky on the own goal we made that luck.  The aggressiveness after the Fire goal is what out us in position to benefit from the mistake.
• Last year's Rapids would have just accepted the draw.
• Interesting to see Hairston pushed up to right mid.  He was very aggressive in the first half.
• Nice pressure from Powers to create the first goal.  It was really the first good look we got.
• I'm pretty sure the Solignac/Badji sub was in the works before the Fire goal.  I don't think Pablo makes that switch if he knew what was going to happen.
• His other two subs were perfect, just 10 minutes later than they should have been.
• Ball watching has gotten us burned at the end of our last two home (league) games.  Maybe the loss of Burling's leadership is hurting our focus late?
• I'm pretty sure MacMath was picked as MOTM before the game had even started.  This was, realistically, his last home game in the nest with Howard showing up and taking his spot.
• The Rapids now have an 11 game undefeated streak, a new team record.

Man of the Match: Marco Pappa.  Easy choice with the winning goal.  We saw what he can do and its good to have him (almost) back.