Crunch Comes Back to Haunt Sockers

RICHFIELD, Ohio — Incentive appeared to be the least of the Sockers’ concerns.

They had a three-goal halftime lead under which the Cleveland Crunch appeared buried in Sunday’s Game 4 of the MSL championship series.

Just hold on in the second half and surely the Crunch would come out a demoralized team for Game 5 Tuesday here.

“The championship was out there for the taking,” said Socker Coach Ron Newman. “The championship was ours.”

Notice Newman used the past tense.

Cleveland fired in five consecutive goals and six overall in the last 20 minutes of the game for a 7-5 victory in front of 10,831.

The series now is tied, 2-2.

“When we needed to be intense,” said Socker midfielder Brian Quinn, “it wasn’t there. And I think that’s how the Crunch got back into it.”

Quinn and his teammates might have been too hard on themselves.

The Cleveland Crunch came out for the second half as if they were enjoying some kind of athletic high.

Turns out the item that altered their ways was an overdose of Socker history.

“Hey, I’ve lost enough games against San Diego,” said Crunch midfielder Michael King. “And I think enough players in this room have lost enough to San Diego. I think everyone of those players individually realized that and decided that if we’re going to lose, we’re going to play hard and get beat by a better team.”

The Crunch have eight players who have lost in the playoffs to San Diego. King did so as a member of the 1987-88 Cleveland Force, swept by the Sockers in four games.

There are three other Crunch players with a score to settle. Zoran Karic, Otto Orf and George Fernandez all played for San Diego. But they either didn’t fit in the Sockers’ plans or the budget and were cast aside.

Karic and Fernandez have made it known that they want to inflict some damage on their old team.

Karic said he realized his chance to do that faded following the first half. But that may have been just the spark to boost his adrenaline.

“It was our last try and we went all out because we had nothing to lose,” he said.

But it was a Crunch player not haunted by the Sockers’ past that accounted for half of the Crunch’s six second-half goals.

Hector Marinaro scored five minutes into the third quarter to make it 4-2, then was back nearly two minutes into the final quarter to make it 4-3.

Teammates Mike Sweeney, Greg Willin and King took over from there to give the Crunch a 6-4 lead.

After Paul Wright met a pass at the back post to pull the Sockers within one, Marinaro finished off the visitors with only 13 seconds remaining by scoring an empty-netter.

The five fourth quarter goals were the most ever allowed by the Sockers in a playoff game.

The Sockers suffered two other firsts:

--Coming in, they boasted a 30-0 record this season when leading after three quarters. They now are 30-1.

--It was the first time this season that the Sockers blew a three-goal lead.

They built that advantage with four first-half goals that came from some unlikely sources.

Jacques Ladoudeur, David Banks, Alex Golovnia and Michael Collins all scored to fill the offensive void created by injuries to Branko Segota (right hamstring) and Waad Hirmez (rib cage muscle).

Only Golovnia had scored previously in the championship series. He now has two goals.