Thursday, September 18, 2003

 

TAMPA, FL - The 2003 A-League champion will be decided Saturday night when the 1999 A-League champion Minnesota Thunder take on the Charleston Battery at Blackbaud Stadium in Charleston, South Carolina. The game will be broadcast live on Fox Sports World at 7:00 pm ET.

Both clubs enter the final with a league championship under their belts with the host Battery having claimed the Pro League (third division) championship in 1996 before joining the A-League. Since then, however, the Battery have been unable to reach the league semifinals despite never missing the postseason over the last six years.

Minnesota, on the other hand, came into the A-League in 1997 without a title despite championship game appearances in its first two USL seasons in 1994 and 1995. After missing the postseason for the first time in 1997, the Thunder reached the A-League final three straight years, all against Rochester, and won the 1999 championship.

The two clubs have only met four times since Minnesota joined USL in 1994, a year after Charleston. The first, and only postseason, meeting came in the 1994 semifinals. The Thunder advanced onto the championship game in Greensboro, North Carolina against the host Dynamo with a surprising 5-0 trouncing of the Battery. Minnesota would fall, 2-1, via a shootout in the final. In 1998, Minnesota and Charleston split a pair of regular season meetings with both clubs winning on the road.

The last meeting between the two came in the final weekend of the season with Charleston blanking the Thunder 3-0. Josh Henderson, who is tied with Minnesota's Johnny Torres for the league lead in playoff goals with three, led the Battery to the 3-0 win with a goal and an assist. He set up Chris Goos in the 39th minute before scoring in the 42nd. Bryan Hoy capped the game with a tally in the 86th.

Henderson and Marco Ferruzzi of last season's runners-up Richmond Kickers will square off in their second straight championship game appearances. Ferruzzi, along with defender Steve Shak, represented the Thunder on the All-League teams. Henderson led the Battery in scoring with 25 points on 10 goals and five assists, ending Paul Conway's four-year run as the team's leading scorer.