Today I'm going back eight years to 2013 and FC Edmonton's North American Soccer League (NASL) match against the Carolina Railhawks. I've grumbled previously about newspaper style programme issues so I won't bore you by doing that again but "The Eddie" publication was just such an issue.
If you take a look at the match highlights video attached to my blog you may find the pitch markings more than a little confusing. Edmonton use Clarke Stadium as their home ground and, at the time, it was shared with the local Canadian Football Team (like American Football but with bigger balls, yes really!). The synthetic pitch surface was marked out with all the Canadian Football yardage markings as well as those for soccer. It made for quite a mess of markings but I suppose it might have helped the Referees Assistants with the offside calls?
Northern Irishman Daryl Fordyce scored the first goal of the afternoon in front of a crowd of 2,523 with a near post header following a throw in. Fordyce, who made three appearances for AFC Bournemouth back in 2006 went on to make 117 appearances for the Eddies scoring 30 goals. Fordyce also scored Edmonton's second in the second half before Carolina pulled one back to no avail late on in the game through former Eddies player Paul Hamilton who had quite the longest hair I can recall seeing on a footballer. Hirsute Hamilton made 24 appearances for the Railhawks that season scoring just the one goal (this one!).
If you search for the name Carolina Railhawks, you won't easily find it because the team is now known as North Carolina FC plying their trade in USL League 1 in the United States in what is the third tier of US Soccer. I have to say that I'm not clear as to the origins of the term "Railhawk". The club's badge at the time depicted a magnificent hawk swooping over a railway track but quite why the two subjects were combined in such a way is beyond me. A search on google reveals a freight train decoupling system known as a Rail Hawk but I doubt that that's the real reference. Anyway the name's dead and gone now so I'll just have to get over it!
CRB Match No. 1971
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