VANCOUVER - They were acts right out of the Three Stooges playbook. A two-footed flying leap at someone else’s feet. A not-so-discreet crotch grab of an unsuspecting victim.

The only thing missing was a Moe-like poke to Curly’s . . . er, Collin’s eye. Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

But this wasn’t a vaudeville stage. It was a soccer pitch. And the Vancouver Whitecaps clownish attacks last Saturday in Orlando were caught and penalized on review by the MLS disciplinary police.

The whole thing has only served to provide more ammunition for Portland Timbers’ head coach Caleb Porter, who never ties of painting the Caps as a dirty club prone to crossing the line.

He was at it again this week ahead of Saturday’s early-season Cascadia Cup matchup at B.C. Place.

“It’s going to be a battle,” Porter told reporters after a Timbers’ practice, delivering the rest with his customary air of arrogant disdain. “You saw the (1-1) pre-season game. It was chippy, it was physical. I think that’s a little bit their style this year.”

Never mind that it was the Timbers who had the only two players ejected that day – albeit one for dissent – but Porter now has got stats to buttress his point.

Three weeks into the 2015 MLS regular-season, the Caps easily lead the league in fouls committed with 59 – Los Angeles and NYFC are next with 45; Portland has 41 – and yellow cards. Vancouver has picked up 11; Philadelphia and NYFC are next with nine and eight, respectively, while Portland has picked up just three.

And two Caps were suspended and fined this week, both for egregious fouls on Orlando centre back Auerlien Collin. Winger Kekuta Manneh got one game for a studs-up, two-footed challenge, while centre back Diego Rodriguez, who was making his MLS debut, got two games for grabbing Collin’s crotch with his left hand as the two jostled for positioning on a corner kick.

Caps’ head coach Carl Robinson said Manneh, the 20-year-old Gambian by way of Texas, had “crossed the line, he’s been dealth with."

“Diego’s done something that’s not in his nature.”

Really? How does Robinson know that? Look, Uruguayan soccer players are notorious for bad decorum. Sebastian Fernandez was a diver and a referee confronter. Luis Suarez is a serial biter. And we’re to believe Rodriguez hasn’t grabbed a man’s junk before in the heat of battle?

“It won’t happen again,” Robinson says of Rodriguez’ indiscretion. “He’s apologized and we move on.”

Rodriguez didn’t talk Thursday. But Manneh was contrite.

“I was really disappointed with myself. I know my teammates and the coaching staff were really disappointed as well. I let them down. I’m still young and I’m learning from my mistakes.”

Robinson insists he’s not worried about his club developing a reputation – “no worries whatsoever” - and tried to turn the tables on Porter.

“Somebody mentioned to me Caleb’s comments about us,” he said with a smirk. “Maybe he’s mixed up - we were playing in whites in pre-season, they were playing in green – because they had two players sent off, but we’re the physical team? It is what it is.”

So are the stats. An average of 20 fouls a game, 11 yellows in three games and two suspensions. The Timbers may not be choir boys, but the Caps are clearly MLS’s early-season ruffians.

“There’s a fine line between playing smart and playing over the line,” says Robinson. “It’s hard because on every corner that comes in, there’s an arm, thee’s a chest, there’s a stamp, there’s a thing like (Rodriguez’ below-the-belt claw).

“Nowadays, with modern technology, cameras all over, you can’t do that. I won’t condone it . . . not with these guys.”

With the simmering animosity between the two teams, and with hard-tackling centre back Pa-Modou Kah back in for Rodriguez, and facing his old club, that might be expecting too much.

gkingston@vancouversun.com