HERRIMAN — One match in, and Craig Harrington has delivered on his pledge, even if it was far from a straightforward path to get there.
Harrington, the new head coach of Utah Royals FC, said when he got the job in February that his team would be more potent offensively, and that certainly occurred Tuesday morning as URFC drew 3-3 with the Houston Dash in both teams’ opening game of the NWSL Challenge Cup at Zions Bank Stadium.
“Three in the back for me, it allows you to push numbers up in the midfield. It gives you good width ... also it allows you to play two center forwards. If you look at historically in this league, two center forwards have done extremely well, so that’s something I want to do.” — URFC coach Craig Harrington
To put the three goals in perspective, in the club’s first two seasons combined in Utah, it scored that many times in a game on just three occasions in 48 tries.
“I promised we’d get goals,” he opened is postmatch press conference on Tuesday. “We got goals.”
There are a couple of important caveats in there, though, as URFC trailed 3-1 in the 82nd minute before a wild finish saw them score twice down the stretch, and both of them came off free kicks.
Still, it came as URFC is playing the tournament without United States Women’s National Team forward Christen Press, which means every attack-minded player on a squad that struggled to score even with her in the lineup had that much more responsibility to try to find the net.
Nevertheless, Harrington moved forward with the idea of playing with just three defenders on the back line as opposed to the four his predecessor Laura Harvey would employ. His thinking, he explained, comes down to a simple math problem. If there’s one less player defending, one more player can get forward to try to score.
“Three in the back for me, it allows you to push numbers up in the midfield,” he said. “It gives you good width ... also it allows you to play two center forwards. If you look at historically in this league, two center forwards have done extremely well, so that’s something I want to do.”
Diana Matheson, who missed all of 2019 because of injury but played to the 88th minute Tuesday and scored URFC’s first goal of the day in the 35th minute, certainly saw the number of goals as a positive on the day (rookie first-round pick Tziarra King scored the equalizer in the 89th minute in her first game as a professional).
“I know we struggled last season scoring goals, so that’s a big one,” she said, “and just the grit and heart to come back at the end there.”
The flip side of a 3-3 draw, of course, is that URFC gave up a bunch of goals. In the two seasons with Harvey at the helm, the team surrendered that many scores only twice, with Harvey’s oft-uttered motto of “prevention is better than cure” at the forefront of just about everything the team did.
While one of the Dash’s goals Tuesday came off a set piece — a beautiful header from Rachel Daly on a corner kick — and one was a tremendous strike from Shea Groom, Houston’s first goal of the day showed the potential peril of having just three players on the back line.
Just seconds into first-half stoppage time, Houston newcomer Katie Naughton — who was part of the trade that sent former Alta High School star Kealia Watt from the Dash to the Chicago Red Stars in the offseason— launched a beautiful ball from her own back line over URFC’s. A darting Veronica Latsko got past URFC’s Gunny Jonsdottir, who has played midfield the past two seasons but was on the back line Tuesday, and URFC scrambled to retreat.
Both Jonsdottir and Rachel Corsie went toward Latsko, which left the middle of the field wide open, and Latsko found Daly, who had an easy shot against URFC goalkeeper Abby Smith, who didn’t play at all last season as Nicole Barnhart held down the starting job (Harrington said Smith was “fantastic” and she “managed the game really well”).
Just as Harvey found out last season during times when she tried to open the game up more offensively, playing with just three on the back line instead of four might prove to be a tradeoff Harrington will have to weigh as time goes on.
“First game of the tournament, we’re just getting our feet wet,” URFC captain Amy Rodriguez said. “We’re finding out a lot about ourselves, building that chemistry. I’m looking forward to the next match.”
Next up for URFC in the Challenge Cup is a date Saturday morning against New Jersey-based Sky Blue FC.