With four games to go, the Riverhounds have everything to play for.
Early season struggles cost the team valuable points, but after a strong run of late summer results, the Hounds still have life trailing Loudoun United FC by two points for the final postseason spot in the Eastern Conference.
Now, with a road trip to Miami FC on Saturday to kick off the October schedule, the Hounds understand that it will take at least three wins in the last four games — and perhaps a sweep of all four — to ensure the team earns its seventh consecutive playoff berth.
“Each game is a playoff game for us. It’s that time of the year,” Hounds captain Danny Griffin said. “We know the position we’ve put ourselves in with some of the points we’ve dropped, but (playoffs are) still there to play for, and that’s the biggest thing. There’s no quit from this team, and we’re going to attack the game in Miami. It has to be three points for us, and that’s our mindset.”
The team’s form since July 13 can be spun two ways.
The optimistic view would be to say the team has lost only once in the last 12 games, and with a better start to the season, that sort of run would be lauded. But with a 5-1-6 record in those games, the pessimistic view is to look at the points dropped in draws that could have been wins.
“We’ve only had one loss in the last 12, but at the same time, we only have five wins in there. If had seven, eight wins, it’d be a whole different picture in the table,” Hounds center back Sean Suber said. “But that’s what comes in soccer. We’ve got to play out to the final whistle. We didn’t do that in some games, and that’s what hurt us, but we know these last four games, we’ve got to fire through the whole 90, get the points and then go from there.”
As a group, the Hounds players see where they need to improve to convert those draws into wins. And by keeping a positive view on their overall form since July, the team has the belief they can pull off what is needed in October.
“The belief is definitely still there,” Suber said. “When we beat Rhode Island, we thought we were locked in for sure, but then we had the loss in Tampa. But I think the belief is there that if we stay focused and stay together the next couple games, we can get the first one down there (in Miami) and get right back.”
Suber said the group is still a unified one, and there isn’t any finger-pointing going on amongst the players. Whether it’s the attacking players knowing games could have been put away by finishing more chances, or the defensive group and goalkeepers trying to clean up the lapses that led to late goals, the focus now is the whole 11 on the field raising their level of play once more for a playoff push.
“We’ve just got to keep holding everyone accountable, the front of the group and the back of the group,” Griffin said. “We know some of the goals we’ve given up have been preventable, and the chances we’ve missed aren’t excusable. We know we’ve got to be better than that in those opportunities to put away games.”
One thing that was dismissed immediately by head coach Bob Lilley was the idea that facing Miami — the league’s last-placed team with just three wins — could cause the Hounds to become complacent.
The coach acknowledged that three months ago, his squad was a couple of defeats away from possibly being out of the running altogether. But the team responded to disappointing outcomes with some of their best performances, including a 5-0 thrashing of Oakland and a huge 1-0 win on the road at Sacramento, two games that showed some fortitude with the team’s backs against the wall.
“I said many times the last couple months that there’s not a lot of wiggle room. Our head is starting to tilt as the water’s rising so we can breathe,” Lilley said. “If we didn’t start winning, there’s no way we build enough confidence to get back in the fight. … We found ways, at times, to take what we could, but the reality is, we’ve been in position to get a lot more juice in the standings, and we haven’t taken advantage of it.”
Though it has become cliché, the “one-game-at-a-time” mantra is particularly appropriate to the Hounds’ current circumstances. The first of those “one games” is Saturday in Miami, and the team will need three points to keep the pressure on in the final weeks.
“It’s definitely better now than earlier in the season, but there’s still another bar for us to clear,” Griffin said. “We know where we’ve been, we know our capabilities, and we know we need to have discipline in some of these moments. But we know we have another level to reach, and we have to reach if for these last four games.”
