Sockers Win Battle Within, Then Beat Blast : MSL: Thursday’s combatants, Dougherty and Woodberry, are Saturday’s heroes in 4-3 victory. Sockers advance to finals.

The Sockers have transcended dynasty. Now it is tyranny.

Like they have so often in the past, the Sockers came from behind twice to steal a 4-3 decision from the Blast in Game 5 of their MSL semifinal series in front of 4,594 at the Arena.

With the victory the Sockers clinched the series, 4-1, and now take a 13-day respite before entering their 10th championship series in the past 11 years.

Games 1 and 2 of the championship series will be at the Sports Arena on Friday, May 1, and Sunday, May 3, against the winner of the Dallas-Cleveland semifinal. Dallas leads that series, 2-1, with the next two games to be played in Cleveland.

In a reference to championship rings, the Sockers have tagged the upcoming series “One for the Other Thumb,” which gives you an idea how many of those past nine championship series the Sockers have won.

(For the cognitively dormant: Nine.)

The bombastic side of the Sockers blew up Thursday during Game 4 when Paul Dougherty and Terry Woodberry went at it in the middle of the field and had to be separated.

Later Dougherty told reporters he was upset with Woodberry’s lack of intensity.

He still appeared upset after Saturday’s victory.

“If you don’t play with intensity,” he said, “then you lose half your game. And for half of this series, some of us weren’t playing with intensity and people get upset with that.”

In part, the team has thrived because players such as Dougherty and Woodberry have put any differences behind them and come out the next time with renewed vigor.

Toward that end, Woodberry called his run in with Dougherty a positive thing.

“You can never take that in a bad way,” Woodberry said of Dougherty’s words. “Anytime you hear something like that, you have to take it as good criticism.”

What happened Saturday, then, was typical of how the Sockers have won championships in the past.

Dougherty and Woodberry accounted for all four Sockers goals, each scoring twice. Woodberry tied it at 3 five minutes into the final quarter on a power-play goal. Dougherty notched the game-winner with four minutes remaining when he knocked in his own rebound.

Dougherty also assisted on Woodberry’s first goal and finished the series as the Sockers’ leading point-scorer with seven goals and six assists. Woodberry finished with three goals in the series.

“I felt all through the series that Paul has been on,” Woodberry said. “And I felt that I’ve been on, too, but I just haven’t been scoring goals. But my opportunities came tonight.”

As far as Blast Coach Kenny Cooper is concerned, the Sockers’ infighting is a manifestation of the coach.

“I know Ron Newman better than anyone else,” said Cooper, who came to this country from England in the late 1960s to play for the Newman-coached Dallas Tornado of the defunct North American Soccer League. “He thrives on controversy. That’s the way he is. That’s the way he’ll always be. He was that way in Dallas where he had three or four guys who, when everyone got (ticked) off at each other, they could always get the guys together.”

Cooper was among those peacemakers back then. Now he’s Newman’s chief adversary. This is the fifth time in five playoff encounters that Cooper and the Blast have lost to Newman and the Sockers. Cooper doesn’t like it.

How can you tell? Just by listening to him.

“The difference between myself and Ron,” Cooper said, “is that when I win, I do my own thing. When Ron wins, he likes to rub your nose in it.”

The difference between Cooper’s team and the Sockers this time was defense. Sockers goalie Victor Nogueira kept the Blast from taking a 4-2 lead in the second quarter by making two diving saves, first robbing Joe Koziol, then squelching Iain Fraser.

“If I was Ron Newman,” Cooper said, “I would give Nogueira the entire salary cap. In all my years in soccer I have never seen anybody control a game like that. It’s inspiring.”

Nogueira shrugged off the praise.

“(Baltimore goalie Cris) Vaccaro made a lot of saves, too,” he said.

Nogueira and his defenders--Kevin Crow, David Banks, Alex Golovnia, Jimmy McGeough and Woodberry--again silenced the Blast’s three most lethal scorers, Domenic Mobilio, Rusty Troy and Jean Harbor.

This despite the Sockers finishing with only three blocks and Nogueira with 11 saves (Vaccaro made 14 saves).

Most remarkable, however, is that Crow, Banks, Golovnia and McGeough played on sprained ankles. Crow had two sprains, the others were favoring their right ankles.

“If anyone, or two, went down (tonight),” Newman said. “We wouldn’t have had them for two games because they would have been back-to-back (Monday and Tuesday). We could have lost the whole thing. It could have slipped away from us. Now we have a chance to get Kevin and David and the rest of them healthy.”

Another difference was Baltimore’s relative youth. A rookie mistake by Harbor cost them a victory in Game 3, and another miscue by Harbor led to Woodberry’s tying goal Saturday.

Only three minutes into the final quarter, Harbor was assessed a foul for tripping Woodberry. Seconds later referee Kelly Mock gave Harbor a two-minute delay of game penalty because Harbor picked up the ball and threw it into the Sockers’ end to protest the initial call.

“You could see everybody just drop and cringe when Jean did that,” Cooper said. “You could sense a little bit of emptiness.”

With 11 seconds left in Harbor’s penalty, Woodberry tied the game by converting a centering pass from Thompson Usiyan, who finished the series with a team-high seven assists.

Afterward, Newman was asked to reveal the secret to the Sockers’ success. For once, he wasn’t ready with a quick quip.

After thinking a couple seconds, he said, “I think we’re so worried about losing, we keep busting our (tails) to get to the next one.”

For the Sockers, then, paranoia is a virtue.