Thursday, April 17, 2008

The 2007 Season
Richmond was unbeaten through the first 11 matches of the 2007 season when the New Hampshire Phantoms won a 2-1 decision at home. That loss ended the 17-game unbeaten streak the Kickers had going since the Wilmington Hammerheads beat them by the same score on Wednesday, July 26 2006.

It will be tough for the Kickers to match that kind of run in 2008 with the ever-increasing style of defensive soccer that the Harrisburg City Islanders captained in 2007. The teams that finished at the top of the table last season – Richmond, Harrisburg and the Cleveland City Stars, allowed less goals combined (44), than the last place Bermuda Hogges (45). If the rest of the league follows suit and continues to play defense-first soccer, the parity of the league will continue to grow, narrowing the gap between the elite Richmond Kickers and the rest of the USL Second Division.

That being said, the Kickers did finish 12-3-5 against these teams a season ago. And they did so by scoring goals – 37 at season’s end. Richmond’s greatest threat was their lack of a primary goal scorer. They had six players net double-digit point totals on the year.

The 2008 Season
The downside to that success is that only nine of those players will return from the 2007 team. Heading that list is USL-2 MVP Michael Burke (3 goals, 9 assists), David Bulow (5 goals, 1 assist) and Sascha Gorres (3 goals, 4 assists). Ronnie Pascale, the best of a ridiculously talented USL-2 goalkeeping pool in 2007, will return for the 2008 season as well.

To combat the offseason losses of Ricky Schramm (6 goals, 2 assists), who went to Red Bull New York, Robert Ssejjemba (6 goals, 2 assists), who went to the Charlotte Eagles, and Matthew Watson (6 goals, 3 assists), who went to the Carolina RailHawks – the Kickers have brought in Luke Vercollone (1 goal, 2 assists) from the Charleston Battery and Fabian Dawkins who spent last season with Village United FC of the Jamaican First Division. Dawkins is a former All-League player for the USL-1 Atlanta Silverbacks.

The First Five
The Kickers will spend more time on the road than at home through their first five matches after their season opening game this Saturday, April 19 from the University of Richmond Stadium. That match, against the Western Mass Pioneers, is set to kick off at 7:00 PM EST. The loss of Ssejjemba to Charlotte will sting the most it will all season during Richmond’s first five – they play the Eagles on Friday, April 25 and again on Saturday, May 24. The matches pinned between those dates are with Crystal Palace Baltimore, who is not likely to start their second campaign in the same haze they did last season, and a road-trip to Massachusetts to see the Pioneers for a second time in five weeks.