NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR FURY

Anyone who doesn’t think Fury FC are looking forward to the upcoming five-week homestand at TD Place obviously wasn’t sharing the friendly skies with the Ottawa side last weekend. Fury’s FC’s flight from Toronto was just approaching Louisville International Airport when the pilot informed them that, due to intense storms in eastern Indiana and Western Kentucky, the flight would have to circle for about an hour. “The good thing was that he did say we had enough fuel to do it,” joked Fury FC head coach Paul Dalglish of the beginning to a weekend that resulted in a 2-1 loss to Louisville. Team travel in the United Soccer League falls well short of chartered flights so, if it’s not a bus trip to Toronto or Rochester, N.Y., the team flies commercial, usually through Toronto Pearson for a connector to wherever they’re headed in the U.S. That’s why, after Saturday’s game in Toronto, Fury FC can forget all about packing bags and flight times until mid-August, with four home games over the next five Saturdays. “There’s no better way to climb the table than with a long homestand like we have coming up,” said Dalglish. “One game a week, every Monday off, it’s going to be great to get into that kind of routine.” The eighth-place Fury FC can just about determine their own destiny with the final two games of the stand against the fifthplace Bethlehem Steel FC (Aug. 5) and the third-place Charlotte Independence (Aug. 12). Don Campbell