July 20, 2011
In case you haven't heard, Abby Wambach and magicJack are in town to take on the WNY Flash tonight at Sahlen's Stadium.
With the Women's World Cup afterglow in full effect, tonight's match will push to be the largest crowd in Flash history, WPS standalone history, Sahlen's Stadium history, and the largest soccer crowd in Rochester since the legendary 1977 Operation Squeeze NASL playoff match between the Lancers and the NY Cosmos.
Yup, it's kind of a big deal. It's so big that Fox Soccer Channel has picked up the game and Soccer America is commenting on it.
In fact, tonight's match will see more fans enter Sahlen's Stadium than the five previous home matches for the Flash that didn't feature Abby Wambach. The Flash are averaging 2065 fans per match when Abby Wambach and magicJack aren't the visitors. They drew 8076 the first time that they came to town. They could hit 15000 fans tonight. If they hit the 15000 fans number, that will bring the average attendance to 5559 fans per game.
If the Flash draw 3000 fans to each of their final two home matches, average attendance will be around 4375 per match.
It makes me wonder what the Flash attendance would be like if they had traded Marta for Abby before the season started.
But, tonight should be fun. And it could be a good recruiting event for the Flash for the 2012 season. With magicJack drawing around 1000 fans at home, I'm sure they'll enjoy playing in front of the best crowd in WPS history.
News & Notes:
- Devo breaks down how busy Abby and the USWNT players have been since returning home.
- Studio 90 follows the USWNT return to the states.
- Jenna Pel also looks at how the rest of the world has sneaked into the women's soccer world and the four takeaways for the US.
- Jeff Kassouf has some really interesting WPS news and notes. And I do agree that this magicJack fansite is awesome.
- Jeff also has a WWC wrap up news and notes post with post-Finals video from the Back Nine Grill.
- No Short Corners suggests people look into the 2012 Olympics if the Women's World Cup run turned you on to women's soccer.
- The USA 10 Kit looks at how Pia Sundhage remade the USWNT.
- Rob Stone and Bill Simmons talk Women's World Cup over at Grantland.
- The Free Beer Movement talks about the thoughts and feelings they had during the WWC Final.
- The Shin Guardian has a roundtable with a few ex-USMNT/MLS players turned broadcasters. This definitely gets a must read rating from me.
- Colorado's Conor Casey is done for the season due to a torn achilles suffered against Seattle over the weekend.
- SBI.net has their MLS All Star All-Snub team.
- MLS attendance is up 6.3% to date and the league is averaging 17,526 fans per match. With 8 teams averaging over 18,000 fans per match, I wonder what MLS has to do to be considered a "big time sport in the US" by the mainstream media? As a comparison, the NHL averaged 17,126 fans per game and the NBA averaged 17,319 fans per game in 2010-11.
- The USA 10 Kit looks at Omar Salgado's journey from potential Mexican International to US International.
- I know people like to argue against FieldTurf. But, here is an argument against laying temporary natural grass over top of an artificial surface.
- The Fort walked out on the Revs in protest. I hope the Revs front office wakes up soon.
- In MISL news, the Missouri Comets signed their first two players, the Norfolk SharX have named their head coach, and the Milwaukee Wave have announced two exhibition matches.
On the Lancer front, I hope to have some big news to talk about in the next week or so.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to jamesrweise@gmail.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
