dallas weather

Weather delays playing big role in FC Dallas games of late

There weren't any goals and not many scoring chances, making the nearly two-hour weather delay one of the biggest storylines from FC Dallas' 0-0 tie with Real Salt Lake Sunday night at Pizza Hut Park. It was the second time in three weeks, a span of four home games, that a lengthy delay due to lightning interrupted a game. Dallas utlized the wet field to defeat Los Angeles back on May 1, but they were unable to pull off the late heroics this time.

Without any goals, the biggest story from FC Dallas’ 0-0 tie with Real Salt Lake Sunday night was the lengthy weather delay.
For the second time in three weeks and a span of four home games, Dallas had to endure a long interruption due to lightning in the area, and then come back out onto a wet field and finish a game.
Back on May 1, against the Los Angeles Galaxy, there was a 1:06 delay, suspending the game after 83 minutes, and when Dallas came back on the field, Brek Shea scored the game-winning goal to take a 2-1 victory away.
This time, the game was stopped in the 83rd minute again, and after a nearly two-hour delay (1:52), the teams came back out and wound up in a 0-0 draw.
“We’ve probably had more rain delays and lightning delays than I’ve ever had in my entire career the last three weeks,” said Dallas goalkeeper Kevin Hartman, a 15-year MLS veteran who made two saves for his fourth straight shutout.
“I guess it helped some,” admitted Dallas captain Daniel Hernandez, about having had such a recent experience with a long delay.  “We weren’t able to get another cross from Brek, but I thought that we went out pretty sharp, those last 10 minutes of the game, even had a couple of chances to score.  I’m proud of the guys, they continued to fight.  We’re not upset with the point, but we’d have rather had the three points.”
Spending the first hour and a half of the delay in their locker room, not even sure if they would need to return to the field, the players tried to stay alert and focused.
“Just hanging out,” said Hartman of their activities during the delay.  “We did a little bit of juggling in the weight room, but reality is, a lot of the time, we didn’t know what it was and then somebody came in and said, ‘Ten minutes until we go back out,’ so you make sure you’re re-hydrated and fresh and ready to go.  You try not to tighten up.  We were given probably a 25-minute period to get prepared athletically.”
“They were able to let us know ahead of time, get a brief warm-up here in the locker room before we went out,” added Hernandez.  “We’d been through this before, against LA, it wasn’t a big shock to us.  Obviously, we would have liked to have finished eight minutes of the game before we had that big delay, but we had to do that against LA and we were able to get loose and warm before we had to go back out.”
For Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman, the delay gave him an opportunity to do something he’d been meaning to get to for awhile.
“We’ve been through it before, and I knew the league was going to ask us to finish the game once the weather breaks, so I stayed away and basically spent about an hour and 15 minutes cleaning my office,” Hyndman said.  “I don’t usually have time to do it and I wanted to keep busy.”
Hartman also pointed out that the experience of beating the Galaxy helped motivate him and his teammates because it allowed them to approach the prospect of going back on the field in a positive manner.
“This is a great opportunity for us to go out there at home and garner three points,” Hartman said his thought process was.  “So when you look at it like that, it kind of changes guys’ mindset.  It’s not like, ‘We’ve got to wait around and do this,’ it’s more like, ‘Hey, we can do this, this is our opportunity to go back out and get points.’  If it’s framed in the right way, it can be a positive."
"Obviously, against Los Angeles it paid off and tonight we weren’t able to get the goal, but the reality is, I thought we created two or three opportunities that could have won us the game.”