The Portland Timbers will look to spoil the Carolina RailHawks' playoff hopes as they square off tonight in Cary, N.C. at 4:30 p.m. (Pacific). Watch the Timbers final match of the 2008 season live online through USL Live.
Click here for tonight's match notes.
Starting lineups:
POR: GK Harrison, D Griffin, D Knowles, D S. Thompson, D Higgins, M Little, M Guante, M Poltl, M Brown, F Walker, F Bagley
CAR: GK McClellan, D Stokes, D Gutierrez, D Norkus, D Sanfilippo, M Low, M Fusiller, M Nuñez, Watson, F Diallo, F Antoniuk
Match Preview:
The Portland Timbers conclude the 2008 USL First Division season tonight against the Carolina RailHawks. The two sides meet for the third time this season, with Portland looking to even the season series with their first win over the RailHawks in 2008. Carolina leads the season series 1-0-1.
Portland faces its season finale without forward Takayuki Suzuki and defender Cameron Dunn due to league imposed, one-match suspensions. Suzuki is out on yellow-card accumulation while Dunn misses tonight’s match as a result of his red-card ejection in the Timbers’ last match on Sept. 11.
Last weekend, the Timbers were one of two clubs (the other was Miami FC Blues) eliminated from the playoff race as a result of the Minnesota Thunder’s 4-0 win over the Charleston Battery on Sept. 13. The 2008 season marks just the third time in Portland’s eight seasons in the USL First Division that it has not advanced to the postseason; the other seasons were 2003 and 2006.
The Timbers have lost their last three matches and will look to snap their skid tonight against Carolina. In two previous meetings this season, the Timbers are 0-1-1 against the RailHawks and have been held scoreless in both of those contests. Portland was handed a 1-0 loss in North Carolina in its first visit to WakeMed Soccer Park on June 27. In Portland on July 24, the two sides battled to a 0-0 draw in a match that saw both clubs reduced to 10 men with red cards issued to Portland’s Chris Brown and Carolina’s David Stokes. Since Carolina joined the USL First Division in 2007, the Timbers are 1-1-2 all-time against the RailHawks. Portland holds a 4-2-1 mark in regular-season finales since joining the league in 2001.
Portland has also lost their last three road matches and is just 2-7-5 away from PGE Park this season. The two road victories for the Timbers this season came at Montreal (1-0) on May 30 and at Atlanta (2-0) on June 28.
Defenders Scot Thompson and Cameron Knowles are both in position to reach career milestones tonight in Carolina. In his five seasons in Portland, Thompson has accumulated 9,979 minutes and could become just the fourth player in Timbers modern franchise history to crack the 10,000 minutes played mark. He would join former midfielders Hugo Alacarz-Cuellar and Brian Winters and head coach Gavin Wilkinson on the list of Timbers players with at least 10,000 minutes played.
Knowles has played in 2,520 minutes this season and is just 76 minutes shy of the club’s record for minutes played in a single season. The current single-season record is 2,596 minutes played by Keith Costigan in 2002.
