Quote Sheet: MB 0-1 OC
Cardinale Stadium; Seaside, California
Saturday, October 14, 2023
Sporting Director & Head Coach Frank Yallop
On his initial takeaways from the season:
“It’s a difficult one because we are pretty close to being a good side, but we’re not quite good enough. We lost some games here that we should’ve done better and got results in, but that’s football. That’s what we are right now. I’m just disappointed for the guys. They tried their hardest. I thought tonight was a pretty good example of how we’ve probably played most of the year. We played well enough to get a result, but didn’t finish our chances. We had a couple of opportunities and didn’t score. Disappointed, but have to focus and look forward to next season. That’s all you can do now.”
On the good performance to end the season despite the result:
“I tried to relax the guys for this game. There was nothing on the line, so they were probably playing more relaxed than normal anyway. But I think we’ve played pretty good at times here, we’ve just been punished by mistakes and bad play once in a while here and there. It’s a tough league, it’s very equal. We only missed the playoffs by a few points. I can go back to the game against San Diego at home. If we win that game and then go to Oakland and hold onto that game, we’re in the playoffs. It’s just a crazy 10 minutes where we concede two against San Diego and then a late goal against Oakland. We can go through the season and look at that and most teams will, but we had the games in our hands where we should have sorted through and won it. I think that’s kind of us at the moment. We’ve got to defend better though as a group. We can’t give up easy goals in our league because there’s some very good players, including tonight. Iloski doesn’t have many touches, but scores the winning goal. We didn’t have that. So for us it’s about regrouping and trying to get better for next season.”
Defender Hugh Roberts II
On the season:
“We have some stuff we can hang our heads high on. We got to third place, which is so rare. Honestly In my tenured career I have only gotten to third place two or three times. We had the perseverance when we dropped below the playoff line, to then win five in a row and get back above the line is a testament to our mentality. It’s unfortunate we didn’t close out the job, but we have something to hang our heads on. Even in this game tonight, we didn’t take the victory, but I feel like this was one of our best performances overall and something that we can move into next year with.”
On using the sting from this season as fuel for 2024:
“We had a similar mentality coming into this year too, but this year was probably better than last year. Last year we weren’t exactly right there, but this year we were – it came down to the last game. So it’s a step in the right direction, and we’ll bring that same feeling into next year too. This season was a step up from last year, we finished one win away from playoffs. Now next year we have to get in.”
