Rowdies suffer 1st home setback against Impact

Sometimes a game can turn in less than a minute.

That's what happened to the FC Tampa Bay Rowdies on Saturday night as they lost for the first time at home this season and for the second time in as many games. Roberto Brown had a goal and an assist as the Montreal Impact earned a 2-1 victory at Steinbrenner Field in the USSF Division II.

Montreal (4-3-3) had taken the lead in the 49th minute when Peter Byers beat an offside trap before firing past Daryl Sattler. That seemed to wake Tampa Bay (5-3-3) out of a somewhat lethargic performance. Suddenly the passing was crisper and the chances began to come.

The first two were for Aaron Wheeler, who first saw his header from close range turned aside by Montreal goalkeeper Srdjan Djekanovic for a corner. A minute later, Wheeler broke in on goal and finished, but the assistant referee ruled him offside, negating the goal.

"I cannot wait to see the video," Wheeler said. "Obviously there's a way I could have been offside, and as a forward you never think you're offside. But I'm really looking forward to seeing that."

The game's key sequence came in the 65th minute.

Aaron King, with his first touch of the game after being brought on as a substitute, latched onto a pass by Wheeler and fired toward the bottom left corner of the net from the top of the penalty area, but Djekanovic saved again, diving low to his right. The Impact then came straight back down the field and Brown finished from Tony Donatelli's cross for a 2-0 lead.

"It's a sore one," Rowdies coach Paul Dalglish said. "Sometimes in this game you don't always get what you deserve. You know, you've just got to take your chances, and they took their chances better than us tonight. That's just the way it goes sometimes."

The Impact's goal seemed to take the air out of the 4,787 in attendance, but King gave the crowd reason for hope in the 70th minute, firing home his fourth goal of the season after a good run by Stanley Nyazamba.

The Rowdies pushed for an equalizer, but Wheeler was denied again by Djekanovic on a header from 8 yards out after Wheeler had lost his marker in the 79th minute, capping an outstanding performance for the second straight week by the goalkeeper facing the Rowdies.

"Goalies will have games where they play really, really well," Wheeler said. "You can do all the right things, but at the end of the day if the guy makes the big saves, there's nothing you can do about it. We've just got to hope sometime soon the luck will change for us."