First and foremost, I would like to turn myself in to both the Portland Police Department and the Portland Hearts of Pine front office. I believe that after Rhode Island scored their lone goal, via a Logan Dorsey header in the 61st minute, I may have accidentally made eye contact with a Hearts of Pine fan in the next section over. I now recognize how deeply that may have frightened and offended their fans.

I’m offering myself up for whatever punishment they may have in store for me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that anything they can come up would be worse than what I just experience for 90 minutes in Rhode Island FC’s 2-1 loss at Portland on Saturday.

Anyway, getting to the point… I’m going to flex my privilege of this being a fan-run blog and forego individual player ratings (as is my right to do. Not to mention, like I said last week – nothing nice to say). Instead, here is an assortment of disparate, no-particular-order, stream of consciousness notes.

Portland

• I’m not tainting the rest of my visit in Portland with a full rewatch of that match. Sorry. I’m here with my beloved wife and we have so many better things to do. I’m going to eat my feelings, and not think about football for a few days.
• After my first 12 hours in Portland, I’m going to hurt some feelings here but… is the city overhyped? It might be.
  • Am I saying it because I’m bummed at the result? Yes. Do I also think I might actually mean it? Yes.
  • Is Charleston a superior city and away day? I’ll revisit this question after the rest of our trip.
  • Duckfat, however, does live up to the hype.

Atmosphere

• Hearts of Pine’s 22nd consecutive sellout, if I’m not mistaken. It kills me that Rhode Island FC hasn’t caught fire in the community the same way that HoP has. It unironically keeps me up at night.
• As for the 150+ loyal RIFC fans who did travel: Bravo. I think it was our best away section since Colorado Springs in 2024, and we made great noise even when the team gave us nothing to cheer for right out of the gate.
• Were there shenanigans? Hardly worth mentioning. Hearts of Pine fans instigated (as is their right, when they score two minutes into the match), and then got upset when Rhode Island fans responded. It’s something you see at every single away day, and nothing to write home about.

Players

• Khano went with moderate rotation – bringing Pity, Nick Scardina, and Noah Fuson into the starting lineup compared to last week.
  • Most notably – he started JJ Williams, which has not been the norm for cup competitions this season.
    • The relatively strong lineup makes it all the more frustrating for us to essentially be out of the game in the third minute. As Ryan outlined on last weeks Tide Talk podcast, we’ve won just one match where we conceded first since last season.
• We saw a triple substitution and a formation change (to three at the back) at half time. I would say, genuinely, at least we tried something.
• I’ve been crying out all week for Logan Dorsey to shut me up, and he did. Fair play, Logan. Honestly, he should’ve had a brace and an equalizing goal as well – but the Portland keeper was very good today.
  • And let me repeat that – the Portland keeper was very, very good today. Rhode Island were not without their chances.
• What has happened to our defense? It’s in shambles. We conceded two goals across all competitions in April, but then conceded two in the first half to a 3rd division team today? And this after shipping three at home to Birmingham just two weekends ago.
  • Our defending on counterattacks in particular today was absolutely pathetic. Anyone who has paid attention to Hearts of Pine knows how quickly and beautifully they can slice through a team on the counter, and we didn’t look prepared for it at all.
• Who am I missing? Is there anything else nice to say about our players after today? I thought Scardina, Amos, and Pity had a few moments (Amos, of course, with the corner delivery for Dorsey’s goal) – but clearly it was not enough.

Bigger Picture

• This is all getting kind of ugly. Again.
• After a strong April, we’re now winless half way through May. Four games without a win. The inconsistency with this team is astonishing. Always one step forward, two steps back.
• Losing to a lower-division team is simply not acceptable for a team with the standards and expectations of Rhode Island FC.
  • Least of all, a team that is struggling in that lower-division and had won just one game at home until Saturday.
  • The performance itself was not that bad. We had a slew of high quality chances. We had 10 corners compared to their one. We had 32 touches in their box compared to their 14. The bigger issue is that we were ever in the position of being down two goals before the 30-minute mark.
• We’re essentially out of the USL Cup competition. We’re in last place (6th) in Group E. I would be surprised not to see us rotate heavily in the remaining two group stage games, since it would require a miracle for us to advance now.
  • We put ourselves in a very strong position to be the winner of our group with the result at Hartford in April, and then we threw it away.

I keep coming back to – ultimately, it’s embarrassing. We came out of the gate in 2024 with a very competitive roster, and have had three years to refine and improve that core. During that time, we also opened what is one of the absolute best stadiums and facilities in the entire league. All that, and we have one home league win this season – and now, we’ll have to sit through two more borderline-meaningless USL Cup games at home because we couldn’t beat a struggling third-division side.