Portland Thorns Inaugural Season Home Opener vs Seattle Reign (2-1)

Heather and I went to the inaugural season home opener of the Portland Thorns.  The Thorns are a National Women’s Soccer League team.  We first were at the top of section 205 but later joined Lea, a friend from my undergraduate days at OSU, at the bottom of 207 right behind Rose City Riveters.

First kick of the first home game of the inaugural season of the Portland Thorns!

The stadium was quite full.  Attendance was a bit above 16,000 people which set a record for the NWSL.

Front row seats in section 205 behind the Rose City Riveters.  Sure, some of the chants weren’t top notch and sure there were only two brave capos leading the cheers but they did a darn fine job for the first ever game for the Thorns at Jeld-Wen Field!

First goal of the game. The Rose City Riveters go nuts!

Roses have wings!

Second goal of the night for the Thorns. The Rose City Riveters made sure to let the team know what they thought of it! 😀

Final seconds of the inaugural season home opener game of the Portland Thorns. We won 2-1 against the Seattle Reign. Do I smell a rivalry in the making?

All in all, I thought that there was some excellent soccer on the field. I would venture so far as to say that I preferred the Thorns experience to a normal Timbers game. Not only was it more intimate but the crowd was much happier than the normally intense Timbers Army crowd. There were tons of families with soccer kids running around having a great time. The capos looked like they were having fun rather than being pissed off at the fans like at Timbers games. The best part of all was that you could tell all of the players were absolutely loving playing the game for all of their fans.

One hilarious thing that we saw was a woman in her mid to late 20s (maybe early 30s? I am a bad judge of age) come rushing up out of the middle of 107 to find a security guard. There was a man that had TOO MUCH TO DRINK and the security guards needed to deal with him RIGHT THAT INSTANT! The guy who normally stands at the 107/108 entrance checking tickets flagged a couple of the aqua shirt event staff to follow him down to talk to the guy. After about 30 seconds (where it appeared the ticket guy told the guy to stop drinking so much), he came back up and said that he cut the guy off. Later before the end of the game, the drunk guy came up to go to the bathroom. For being supposedly way too drunk to remain in the stadium, I would say that he was not that many beers in. So it goes with Rose City Riveters who haven’t been in the 100 level of the Timbers Army before. Drunkenness is an occupational hazard. Hopefully everyone can remain civil and level headed at future games.

I am really looking forward to the next home game of the Thorns.  This is the laid back, fun soccer atmosphere that I remember from the first season of the MLS for the Timbers.

One interesting thought I had while driving back home to Corvallis is that the Thorns can obviously support a very good fan base and sell seats.  However, I am concerned about some of the other teams in the eight team league.  I wonder if it comes to pass that some of the other teams are about to fold, will the Timbers buy up these other teams and move them to the metro Portland area?  I bet that we could support several more teams in the greater metro area (Hillsboro Hornets, Gresham Mountaineers, Wilsonville Pioneers, Vancouver Valkyries, etc?).  It would be pretty amazing if Portland started hosting several NWSL teams as a means to keep the league afloat.  Yes, Portland is that crazy about soccer.  But that’s okay.  It’s a good kind of crazy.