Putting pen to paper helps Irwin maintain focus
TFC goalkeeper set to face former team for first time
After Clint Irwin was traded from the Colorado Rapids to Toronto FC in January, the goalkeeper needed more than the length of a tweet to say goodbye to the Denver-based club and its supporters.
“Rapids fans, sometimes 140 characters isnt (sic) enough to express my true gratitude,” Irwin tweeted at the time, directing the Rapids organization and its largest support group to a longer farewell note he penned.
Putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, has always been the best way for the 27-year-old to communicate his thoughts, Irwin said this week as he prepared to face his former club for the first time Saturday night at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
While Irwin is best known as a shotstopper, many analysts believe he was Toronto’s most important acquisition this off-season. In his three years playing Major League Soccer, he has also developed a reputation as a thinking man’s player.
Some of that stems from the side job Irwin has dabbled in during that time — writing.
“Writing, for me, is more a reaction to something or something I want to say that is maybe not a question that comes up in the course of an interview or a viewpoint that’s not being shared,” said Irwin, who has previously expressed interest in writing as part of his post-soccer career, though he’s not yet sure what form that might take.
He has contributed articles to both the Rapids’ and Sports Illustrated’s websites. Last season, Irwin contributed a regular column about MLS to the Telegraph newspaper in England. More recently, he’s written a few things he hasn’t tried to get published.
In his pieces, Irwin has touched on everything from the plight of a nonmillionaire professional athlete to the Rapids dressing room following the United States’ presidential election.
It’s an outlet for the goalkeeper to keep himself from going home and thinking solely about soccer after his nine-to-five wraps up.
“Sometimes that’s not the healthiest thing to do, so you try to take your mind off it, do something else, engage another part of your mind that you might not exercise while you’re on the field,” he said.
This week, though, Irwin’s mind was firmly focused on the field in Commerce City.
Though Colorado finished at the bottom of the Western Conference last year, the Rapids have matched Toronto FC’s record in the first three games of the season with a win, a loss and a draw.
The team replaced outgoing players like Irwin and centreback Drew Moor, another who made the switch from Colorado to Toronto in the offseason, with longtime Premier League goalkeeper Tim Howard and former New England Revolution midfielder Jermaine Jones.
Neither will be available for the Rapids Saturday, though. Howard is finishing out the season with Everton in England before joining Colorado and Jones is suspended.
Captain Michael Bradley is available for the Reds despite receiving an undisclosed fine from the league Friday for violating its confrontation policy during Toronto’s March 20 loss to Sporting Kansas City.
That means Irwin will have his eye on the likes of midfielders Marco Pappa and Dillon Powers. Colorado, with only two goals in its three games, will need to come at Toronto if it wants to secure a crucial home win.
If the Reds can force the Rapids to open up the game, Saturday could be one of the visitors’ best opportunities to secure a second win during its season-opening eight-game road trip.
Powers was one of Irwin’s roommates in Colorado. Though the two have practised against one another, Irwin said it will be interesting to see how they stack up at full tilt.
“It’s going to be weird I think, but after the first 15 minutes you settle in and it’s like a normal game.”