Orlando City coach Adrian Heath commiserates with UCF coach George O’Leary when it comes to injury. Indeed health has been the story of the summer.
UCF coach George O’Leary has had a rough go of it to open this season. An 0-4 record is rough as it is, but two home losses to FIU and Furman have inspired the pitchforks to come out and questions to arise about the program as a whole.
The efforts in both those games were certainly uninspiring, but injuries played a role too. Losing Justin Holman in the second game at Stanford hurt an offense that is struggling to run the ball. Losing center Joey Grant ended his career after an injury early in the season. Jordan Akins going down against Furman took away one of Bo Schneider’s top targets. And then, of course, William Stanback was dismissed.
It has not been easy for the Knights as their depth was already pretty bare entering the season. That has shown itself.
Injuries are part of things and the coach has to do his best to fill in and replace. It is much more difficult to do that with backups even with a “next man up” mentality.
Injuries have been a storyline in Orlando throughout the summer.
Orlando City dealt with injuries to starters Kevin Molino and Brek Shea throughout the season, in addition to Bryan Rochez early in the season and a nagging injury to Kaka.
Coach Adrian Heath commiserated with O’Leary’s struggles on Open Mike with Mike Bianchi:
“It hurts your morale. More importantly, on the back of (four) defeats — and George (O’Leary) knows this better than me because he’s more experienced — you have to try and keep the group together and keep believing in what you’re trying to do.
When you lose two or three of your best players in any sport, it’s hard. I look at some of the English Premier League clubs who have spent 300 million pounds putting their squad together. Suddenly, when you take away the best goal scorer, the best midfielder and the best defender, the team doesn’t look anything like what you thought it was going to be.”
The morale is certainly something UCF needs to pick up after the losses this year. It is tough to pull through when the world seems to be throwing road block after road block in their way.
The good news is it can get turned around.
Orlando City got all those players back (except Molino) and have burned off two impressive wins in a row. The Lions remain in the playoff race with a big six-point matchup with the Montreal Impact at the Citrus Bowl this Saturday.
UCF, as O’Leary and the players have pointed out all week, is 0-0 in the conference as the team heads to Tulane this weekend. There are still goals to accomplish and achieve with this fresh start.
And it takes just one win to change the confidence and cut through the injuries.
