Captain Comeback: T2’s Blair Gavin’s unlikely journey

By Matt Hoffman

It was five years ago Wednesday that Blair Gavin made his MLS debut. The 10th overall pick in the 2010 MLS SuperDraft came to Chivas USA after playing under Timber’s coach Caleb Porter at Akron. Gavin is back playing under Porter, indirectly at least, as he donned the Captain’s armband in Sunday’s win over the Real Monarchs in USL action.

Gavin would have three goals in his first, and by most accounts, most successful campaign of his MLS career. Despite ending his rookie campaign injured, his play was a strong source of optimism. That optimism would be tempered by a hamstring injury would have far-reaching consequences on his career.

The Goats–rightfully notorious for their spendthrift ways–thought enough of Gavin’s talents that the team sent him to Konstanz, Germany. It was there where Gavin saw a sports specialist to undergo a new type of sports regeneration called Myo-Reflex therapy.

As Gavin explained to the league’s website in April 2011:

“They don’t call them ‘pressure points’, but they push spots in your body that are very tight to release tension. We were even working on my neck and it went all the way down to my calves. It wasn’t just ‘hamstring, hamstring, hamstring’, it was a full body thing. “If one link is weak, it leads to another. So it’s basically about strengthening everything and making your whole body better.”

Gavin was able to recover enough to make a comeback in year two but by then another coach Martin Vazquez had been removed in favor of Robin Fraser.

Fraser, a defensive-minded coach had a different system and preferred to play veterans over Gavin. In fairness, there was also speculation that Gavin might be a player who might not ever be able to go the full 90 minutes again.

Playing out of position and perhaps peering over his shoulder a bit, Gavin compiled a few assists but never really developed as the versatile playmaker that many thought he would become.

He still maintained enough value that he was flipped along with the ever-mercurial allocation money to New England in the trade that brought Shalrie Joseph over.

Gavin would play two games for New England before being released at the close of season. Gavin, likely still eligible for salary cap relief as a Generation adidas player, went unselected in the Reallocation draft before catching on with the Sounders in 2013. He spent 2014 in the NASL before coming out to Portland in the offseason.

Gavin played a defensive midfielder role for the Timbers in the preseason. Most importantly, keeping Gavin in the center of the park really seems to play to his strengths. Gavin’s natural instinct has been to play in the center, so even as a wing he would be preternaturally cutting inside.

For a coach like Porter, that sort of instinct might be lauded. However in the rigid world of Chivasland, that act just didn’t fly.

I still stand by my assessment I wrote during the 2012 post-mortem of Gavin:

“I think [Gavin’s] got the potential to be a very good player and think perhaps the change of scenery can help push that especially if he can stay healthy and fully trust his hamstring.”

In Portland, it is a new era not just for the club but for Gavin as well. No longer the young kid bypassed for the veterans, on T2, Gavin is the veteran at the still-young age of 26. Gavin wore the Captain’s armband on Sunday night and is all-too prepared to speak about the highs-and-lows of a players MLS career. Because in the span of his five-year career, Gavin has seen plenty of both.