It was the\u00a0hot topic in the Revs locker room\u00a0shortly after\u00a0New England\u00a0lost 1-0 to\u00a0Houston Sunday night: the 86th minute Hunter Freeman goal\u00a0that may or may not have\u00a0fallen in line with the laws of the game.<\/p>\n
Whether it Steve Nicol, Kevin Alston, or Matt Reis questioning the legitimacy of Freeman’s late-match happenstance heroics, it was hard to avoid the assertion that the Revolution were robbed. Robbed, of a valuable road point, they’ll tell you.<\/p>\n
Here’s the funny thing: they weren’t robbed at all.<\/p>\n
If anything,\u00a0referee Alex Prus’ decision to allow the goal evened the scales after Houston was deprived of the decider a little over half an hour prior to Freeman’s fortuitous goal.<\/p>\n
Rewind the tape to the 57th minute.\u00a0With another wave of Dynamo white crashing onto the Revolution’s shores, the hosts huddled around the area for a Brad Davis corner kick, keen to find the opening goal that had eluded them all night.<\/p>\n
The corner found the\u00a0head of Andre Hainault, before he sent it over to Cam Weaver, who\u00a0wildly flailed at it with a weak side volley.\u00a0But, at\u00a0the last second, Bobby Boswell redirected it back on target with a nifty back heel\u00a0for the sure-fire goal before Zack Schilawski sent it up the flank. Opening goal denied.<\/p>\n
But wait just a minute. Upon further review, it appeared that the ball had crossed the line before Schilawski’s black and neon green boot bounced it out of the goalmouth.<\/p>\n
Even as the ball failed to escape\u00a0Houston’s attacking third, a host of Houston players immediately sought out\u00a0the linesman Craig Lowry\u00a0to plead their case. The ball had crossed the line, they shouted. They jumped and threw their hands up in disbelief. It should be 1-0, Houston. They were certain of it. But,\u00a0Lowry refused to budge, and thus the score remained knotted at no goals even though Boswell’s ball crossed the line.<\/p>\n
Despite the absence of a goal-line view (or – forgive me – goal-line technology) the pair of TV replays available showed that the goal that wasn’t should have counted. So, while the Revs may have a legitimate case that that Freeman’s goal was, in fact, an imposter, they can’t deny that they were saved by\u00a0Lowry’s less than\u00a0perfect\u00a0non-call\u00a0about a\u00a0half an hour earlier.<\/p>\n
The Revs may not have gotten the right call in the 86th minute. And they have reason to be upset about it. But, they certainly can’t complain that it prevented them from claiming a point. After all, had\u00a0Prus and Lowry\u00a0been perfect Sunday night, New England still would have lost 1-0 anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Revs may have gotten the short end on Hunter Freeman’s goal, but they got lucky on another missed call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[24,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/dynamo4.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4489"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4509,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4489\/revisions\/4509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}