Thursday, April 9, 2009

TAMPA, FL -- The Charleston Battery will be looking to make history with a win in Vancouver Saturday at 10:00 pm ET on USL Opening Night, but will have to knock off the defending champion Whitecaps on to do so.

While Puerto Rico and Montreal were stealing the headlines around the region last year with their CONCACAF Champions League performance, all the Battery and Whitecaps did was reach the US Open Cup Final and capture the USL First Division championship, respectively.

Last year, the two sides split perfectly even in the season series with each posting a 2-0 victory and playing to a 1-1 draw in the lone contest in Vancouver. The surprising factor is that most of the goal scorers from the three matches have moved on with only Charleston’s Randi Patterson and Vancouver’s Charles Gbeke – the goalscorers in the draw – remaining. Charleston lost USL-1 Rookie of the Year Osvaldo Alonso to the Major League Soccer Seattle Sounders while Vancouver saw Nicholas Addlery move onto Puerto Rico.

Charleston will be looking for their first-ever victory in their sixth visit to British Columbia since their first contest in 2001. While the Battery have posted two 1-1 draws in the last three games, they remain winless in Vancouver at 0-3-2.

The two sides comes into Opening Night off vastly different preseason programs.

The Battery, as usual, opened their camp the week before the Carolina Challenge Cup. A week into training, the side represented itself well against MLS clubs preparing for their season openers a week after the event’s conclusion. Charleston fell 2-1 to Toronto and Real Salt Lake in the first two matches and were blanked 2-0 by DC United in a rematch of the US Open Cup Championship on the final night.

Charleston then met a pair of USL-2 clubs, posting a 3-1 victory over the 2008 USL-2 regular season champion and finalist Charlotte Eagles only to manage a 1-1 draw against Wilmington, who missed the postseason last year.

Vancouver, similar to Charleston, opened up their preseason with an MLS friendly against the Sounders, suffering a 4-0 defeat. They turned it around with a victory over the University of Victoria before embarking on a globe-trotting trek to the African nation of Tanzania. The Whitecaps dropped the first fixture to the Young Africans select team, but downed Premier League side Simba SC 2-1 and drew 0-0 against the Tanzanian National Team in the remaining two contests before returning home.

Two more handily won collegiate friendlies against the University of British Columbia and Seattle University were followed by a 1-1 draw against league rival Portland.

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