Valour eye first win streak in club history

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This article was published 22/08/2019 (2551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Saturday, Valour FC has the chance to break a franchise record.

Albeit, it’s a record that should have been broken long before, considering the Winnipeg-based professional soccer team began its inaugural season in the Canadian Premier League 18 games ago.

Regardless, if Valour wins the match in Victoria against Pacific FC, it’ll be the first time they’ve strung together back-to-back wins.

Looking at Valour’s year as a game of cat and mouse, Valour has almost always been the mouse. To flip the script, Valour head coach Rob Gale said one of the most important things his team needs to start doing is scoring first.

“If you look at the statistics in modern football, the first goal if you get it, I think it’s 70 per cent of the time that you end up with a positive result. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot a few times this season and we thought it might be a case of déjà vu the other day. But luckily, we responded well, got on the front foot that second half and got ourselves back in it,” Gale said.

On Monday, Edmonton FC got on the board first. But, in unprecedented fashion, Valour stormed back in the second half and capitalized on three scoring opportunities.

“Honestly, if we look at it, we’ve had better second halves in terms of clear goal-scoring chances. But the (opposition) offence probably sat on us because they were protecting the lead and getting level. Having that ability to go at a team was the big difference, really. So we need to score and score early when we get those chances,” Gale said.

With Valour going 1-1-1 against Pacific this season, it’s fair to say Saturday’s game should be a pretty evenly balanced match. Two weeks ago, Valour blanked York9 FC 2-0 in Ontario. Similarly, Pacific FC walked away with the same 2-0 result when visiting York9 last Saturday.

Gale noted that Pacific has been putting up some big numbers on the scoreboard lately, but has some defensive gaps he thinks Valour will be able to take advantage of.

“They can give you chances the opposite way. In all the games that we’ve had it’s been 2-1, 2-2. So we’ve got to be vigilant defensively and build on our second half and our attacking prowess from the last game. Hopefully, we can put a few past them,” Gale said.

Unfortunately for Valour, the team experienced another injury blow this week — just as it seemed the team was coming to full health. Defender Martín Arguiñarena won’t be playing in Saturday’s match, due to a suspected ACL injury. Arguiñarena underwent a scan on Wednesday for a suspected ACL injury similar to Josip Golubar’s, Gale said. If that’s confirmed, it’ll just be another one of the many defensive blows Valour have had to wade through this season.

Yohan Le Bourhis has made three appearances since joining Valour on Aug. 10. He’s put up a strong showing so far, other than a small defensive fumble that led to a goal from Edmonton FC in Monday night’s match.

He was primarily signed to fill the gap left by defenceman Jordan Murrell, who was stripped of his captaincy and suspended six games following his inappropriate in-game antics during a match against the HFX Wanderers earlier this month. Murrell had played nearly 1,400 minutes for Valour prior to his suspension.

When Le Bourhis was asked if he felt nervous about having to fill such a large defensive gap, he didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“No, no pressure. I mean, I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. I came back from an injury not a long time ago, I got an opportunity really quickly and I took it right away,” Le Bourhis said.

Le Bourhis, a product of the Montreal Impact Development Academy, was out for four months with a tear in his right ankle, just missing out on a potential signing with the team. Gale said Le Bourhis had been on his radar for some time. Once he saw he was available, he scooped him up.

The 19 year-old Quebec native has been making the most of his time in Winnipeg. He said he has yet to explore St. Boniface and meet people from Winnipeg’s French community, but looks forward to doing so in the future.

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“It’s been good, I’ve really enjoyed it here, especially the fans when we won the last game against FC Edmonton. It was really great. In my first game we won, too, 2-0, so it felt amazing.”

On Friday, Valour will fly to Victoria to prepare for Saturday’s match against Pacific. Kickoff from the newly renovated Westhill Stadium is at 5 p.m.

devon.shewchuk@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @devonshewchuk