The Riverhounds will argue that they could have done better, but in the end, they were forced to settle for a 0-0 draw in a tough encounter with one of the Eastern Conference’s best teams in the Charleston Battery at Patriots Point.
It might have been a boring affair (the fact that neither team nor the USL Championship's social media pages posted any clips during the game demonstrates just how drab it was), but given that the Riverhounds have lost their past two games and conceded seven goals in their last four, a goalless draw to act as a reset moving forward might just have been what the team needed as they get set to play three games in the space of a week, starting next Saturday when they travel to Hartford Athletic.
Not scared of at least being ambitious in their attempts to get back to winning ways, Junior Etou registered the first real effort for the Riverhounds after five minutes as his left-footed effort from outside the box flashed just wide of the near post. Just five minutes later and it was Danny Griffin who tried his luck from distance, this time forcing a smart save from Daniel Kuzemka to parry behind for a corner.
Eric Dick found himself getting very lucky just before the half-hour mark. In what continues to be a problem for him this season (at least if you ask Bob Lilley), he dropped a ball from a deep free kick and was forced to scramble to get the ball away from danger, and was inches away from conceding a penalty, but managed to get to the ball just ahead of former Hound Nate Dossantos in the only real moment of panic that Lilley’s men had to go through in the opening frame.
The Hounds’ next chance again was forced to come from outside the box, and unsurprisingly it came through Etou (arguably the team’s best player this season) and one of his trademark driving runs down the left-hand side, his cross found the foot of Kazaiah Sterling who tapped it back to Edward Kizza on the edge of the box, but his fierce shot went straight down the throat of Kuzemka for an easy stop as the sides went into the halftime break level.
One thing you can’t fault the Riverhounds for was their creativity when it came to trying to break the deadlock, best demonstrated with a well-worked set-piece that came straight from the training ground, that ended with Etou whipping a well-placed cross towards the back post, sadly it just managed to evade a touch and sailed behind for a goal kick.
As has become the calling card for the Riverhounds this season, failure to convert their chances at one end meant that the longer the game drew out, the more their opponents would just start to show enough of a threat to warn them and Charleston were no exception. First Diego Gutierrez fired a powerful volley from the right-hand side of the box just over the bar before Nick Markanich cut inside and fired a left-footed effort just over the bar, with Dick left scrambling on both efforts.
With just under twenty minutes to go and the danger level increased even further as Dick once again failed to claim a high ball, this time failing to claim Illal Osumanu’s header from a corner and fumbled under pressure from Charleston’s Aaron Molloy and was able to just punch the ball clear before MD Myers could poke the ball home and put the home side ahead.
With less than two minutes to go of normal time, substitute Kenardo Forbes had the best chance of the night for either side. Fellow substitute Pierre Cayet fired in a perfect cross from the left byline and found the head of an onrushing Forbes who had rushed into the box late, but his thunderous header sailed inches wide of the far post as the Riverhounds were forced to settle for a point away from home.
The stats tell the story. Only three shots on target all night for the visitors, all of them coming from outside the box, and whilst they can be proud that they were able to be strong defensively for the most part and allowed the hosts even fewer shots on target than themselves, if this same game and performance had happened at Highmark Stadium, you'd imagine that the home fans wouldn't have exactly been cheering the team off the pitch and into the locker room.
