Splash to Get Old Player, New Coach

The Splash’s new owner plans to offer the job of coach today to someone, but it probably won’t be last year’s coach, George Fernandez. However, one familiar face could return to the team.

New General Manager Don Ebert said Thursday he planned to extend an offer to the lead coaching candidate today, and to bring former Splash all-star Dale Ervine back to the fold.

That means Fernandez probably won’t return as the coach.

“It’s my sincere hope that Dale plays with us,” Ebert said. “I have every intention and desire that he wear the Splash uniform again.”

Fernandez became disenchanted with Ervine’s play last year and the forward was traded to Arizona. After struggling without Ervine, the team’s scoring leader at the time, the Splash won seven of its final eight games and won the Southern Division title.

“I’m probably off [Ebert’s coaching] list because he’s told me he’s bringing back Dale, and after what transpired last year, under those circumstances, it probably wouldn’t work out,” Fernandez said by phone from Cincinnati. “That pretty much scratched me off the list. Until I hear otherwise, that’s the way I’m taking it, [that] they’ll look in another direction for another coach.”

Fernandez was the Continental Indoor Soccer League’s coach of the year in 1994. The Splash won two division titles in two years under Fernandez, who took over a team that went 6-22 before moving to Anaheim.

Ebert declined to discuss specifics about the coaching situation, only that he hoped to make an offer today to the lead candidate.

Ervine was traded to Arizona in midseason for Paul Agyeman, but a condition of the trade--at Arizona’s insistence--was that either team could make a claim to reacquire the rights to the traded player. Arizona isn’t fielding a team this year, and Ebert snapped up Ervine’s rights.