Last weekend a few dozen hearty kiddos and kiddettes made the drive down I-5 to the land that time forgot, a quaint little farming village with a cute little ag school, to watch the MIGHTY PORTLAND TIMBERS play their first proper friendly of the preseason, versus the Oregon State Beavers.  I kid, of course: Corvallis is a fine town, another lovely waypoint in the lush and Eden-like Willamette Valley.  In any case Corvallis has a neat downtown next to the OSU campus, and it was here where the Timbers Army encamped for pregame festivities, at a cozy watering hole known as Squirrels Tavern.

After a completely satisfying corned beef sandwich, I sipped on a pilsner and had some deep meaningful convo with our T.I.F.O. lads, who assured me that this season we will see Big Things.  The word "epic" may or may not have been spoken.  After seeing the incredible displays of t'ifo they came up with last season I am rather a-tingle with anticipation.

Squirrels Tavern having served its purpose and well, everyone clambered back into their vehicles for the nearly 1.5 mile drive to, what I will now be polite and call the Stadium.  For a largely unannounced scrimmage I would say the crowd was healthy.  About 75 TA and maybe 5 times that many normals sat in the cool winter evening and watched the game; my one-sentence review as stolen from a notorious post-game presser: It was a good game, both teams played hard.  Well, not too hard.  It had the feel of…well, of a preseason "how do you do?" scrimmage a week into training camp.  And now some bullet points as I try to emulate Roberto (a task to which I will always fall short in the "actual soccer knowledge" category, but here goes):

• Doug DeMartin poked home a goal in the first half off a ball from George Josten, following a nice build-up by the Timbers.  It would be one of their only real attacks of the half, despite having tons of possession.
  
• When I first started writing this piece I was wondering if it were possible to stretch "Quavas Kirk is tall" into a thousand words; because that's the main impression I got during the first half (when the Timbers were going toward the far goal and I got a better look at the defense).  Kirk started at right back; he looked comfortable on the ball and made some sweet overlapping runs.  He is massive and looks like a real menace on set pieces in the box.
  
• Scot Thompson is dreamy, but you already knew that.  It's always nice to attend scrimmages at these tiny venues, where you can hear the players yelling at one another; and on Saturday you could hear Scot directing traffic all night, yelling at guys to get into position, etc.  I've heard it said that he doesn't have the personality to wear the captain's armband, and that may be true, but he's definitely a vocal presence on the field.  Dare I say “player-coach” qualities?  This is not without precedent on the Timbers.
  
• Matt Pyzdrowski got the start at goalkeeper and didn't have to do a whole lot.  I think he made one really nice save, and there was another ball saved off the line by a defender after a Beavers free kick.  I'm just glad we have a Polish name on the roster.
  
• The Timbers have a bunch of tall dudes in the squad, and it showed against the college kids as they won header after header on long balls and set pieces.  I counted at least three free kicks into the box that were won cleanly by the Timbers but headed just over the bar.  This is promising.  If we can find guys to deliver the ball (Roro? Obatela? Who else?) we'll definitely have guys waiting to get on the end of it.

• The Timbers continued to own possession in the second half but didn't get their second goal until stoppage time, on a very dubious penalty call.  Someone got knocked down on what looked to me like a fair shoulder-to-shoulder challenge, but I think it was the second contact that got the call.  In any event, Rodrigo Lopez stepped up and converted the penalty, and that was pretty much the last kick of the game.  FT: 2-0 to the boys in green black.
  

• The Timbers Army was subdued all night.  This may be a result of pre-season rust; factor in the cool evening (which turned cold once the sun set), small crowd, and the possibility that we were being gracious to our hosts (and the TA is characterized by nothing so much as grace, am I right?), and the end result was a quiet, shall we say relaxing, evening.  I suppose one could say that every college campus needs a library (rim shot).
  

PTFC have now played one trialist scrimmage (charity match vs UP Pilots) and one friendly (OSU), and have had a week and a half of training camp under their belts.  At this point I am ready to call the Timbers 2010 campaign officially Under Way. 

Next up, and may God have mercy on our precious souls, is the so-called friendly tomorrow up in the land of rancid burpo pants.  4 buses of frothed up TA are scheduled to make the trip, and if history is an indication we'll have close to equal that number coming by car, also presumably in a state of frothed-uppedness.  400-500 traveling TA for a weeknight pre-season match?  My head it doth a splode.  Check this space again next weekend, and if I've made it back safely from that accursed nightmare town I will share my thoughts.

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