The Fire have gotten themselves back into playoff contention.
Now they have to stay there.
Entering Saturday’s game at the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Fire are four points out of an Eastern Conference playoff spot. Despite squandering a 2-0 halftime lead in a 3-2 loss to Columbus to start their three-game homestand, the Fire (6-10-5, 23 points) recovered to beat Toronto and Seattle to effectively keep their postseason hopes alive.
While coach Ezra Hendrickson was proud of how his players responded from the potentially devastating Crew game, he knows they have to emulate the Toronto and Seattle performances more regularly to reach their goals.
“Once we get over that [playoff] line, which I think we will, we just have to maintain this type of performance,” Hendrickson said. “Stick within the game plan and we’ll be fine, we’ll be successful. And they believe in that. They believe when we talk to them and when we tell them, and they believe in what it is that we’re doing. So, when that happens and you get that consistency, good things will happen.”
Consistency has been hard for the Fire to achieve during a season that’s feeling like a roller-coaster.
They began the year with eight points through four games and looked like one of the most improved teams in the league. Then they went on a 10-game winless streak that wiped out the promising start, finding creative yet familiar ways to drop points.
The loss to Columbus looked like the finishing blow, as the Fire capitulated in the second half after dominating the first 45 minutes on their home field. But to their credit, the Fire rebounded for a pair of wins and showed a resiliency they hadn’t displayed earlier this year, apparently making the right choice when they hit a fork in the road with their season on the brink of disaster.
“It can go two ways: you can put your arms down and say we’ve had a tough season. Things haven’t gone our way, we gave a game away,” defender Jonathan Bornstein said. “Or you can go the opposite and say, look, we played 45 minutes of great soccer and 45 minutes of bad soccer [against Columbus]. We need to have some more consistency and then the group will be a lot better. So I think as a group, we came out thinking the positive way.”
Wearing a wrap on his left wrist after getting accidentally stepped on by teammate Federico Navarro during Saturday’s win, goalkeeper Gabriel Slonina had a similar view.
“I think it’s just that we are fighters. We didn’t want our season to be over,” Slonina said. “So I think that losing 3-2 versus Columbus at home, that hurt a lot. It meant a lot and I think we added it as fuel to our fire. We didn’t sit back and let it hurt us. We used it as an advantage so I think that’s how we bounced back.”
The Fire hope that bounce continues the rest of the season.
