Press gears up for Buck Shaw debut

We’re just a day away from the Quakes’ second home opener, when they face FC Dallas (née Burn) at Buck Shaw Stadium in Santa Clara. With all the renovations to the stadium complete — including an entirely new playing field, new lights, a new press box for the TV and radio folks, a new sound system, and even a video scoreboard — it’s shaping up to be a thrilling day.

San Jose GM John Doyle told Dan Giesin of the San Francisco Chronicle that he is most excited about the new field, a combination of rye and Bermuda grasses. “It’s a great surface to play on. It’s a smooth surface, very flat, and the ball rolls nice and neat. The field looks great and should play great.” Giesin also spoke to coach Frank Yallop, who echoed Doyle’s enthusiasm, adding that the team is “hoping the home crowd is nice and loud.”

With all this enthusiasm for the team’s local debut, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that the naysayers at the local rag would take the opportunity to, uh, say nay about the whole affair. Yes, while large segments of their readership are basically thrilled that the Earthquakes have returned to the South Bay, the Mercury News is taking this opportunity to completely exaggerate the potential for problems due to parking. Actually, there is some useful information in the story about different transit options for traveling to and from the game, but it is overshadowed by the headline (”Neighbors preparing for Earthquakes weekend return” — which, as long as we’re playing media critic, needs an apostrophe after the “s” in “Earthquakes”) and their emphasis on “concerns” the Newhall Neighborhood Association expressed to its members in an April 4 message. (Those concerns must have been addressed by the team’s extensive traffic and parking mitigation plans since the story reports that “John Urban, president of the association, and three other board members did not return calls for comment.” We’re guessing that at least one of the four would have replied if they felt their needs hadn’t been addressed.)

Finally, as first reported here on Center Line Soccer, Ryan Cochrane and Jay Ayres will miss Saturday’s match due to injuries sustained in their clash of heads in the 9th minute of Wednesday night’s U.S. Open Cup play-in match against Real Salt Lake. Elliott Almond of the Mercury News provides a few additional details on the story, including this assessment of the collision from Yallop: “They hit right in each other’s faces… It was pretty sickening. It was an awful sound. In all the years I’ve been in soccer I’ve never heard or seen anything like that.”

Here’s hoping both Ayres and Cochrane are able to get back on the field soon.