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Roger Goldingay standing by one of the most successful carts at Cartlandia, The Rock House Grill. Goldingay started Cartlandia.

(Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian)

In 1975, Roger Goldingay made the decision to leave Seattle and head to Portland for an open tryout with the Portland Timbers.

The NASL required that the Timbers sign at least three players from either Canada or the United States and Goldingay ended up being one of just three Americans on the Timbers roster that season.

Goldingay had grown up in the Washington area at a time where very few people were playing soccer. But, in 1974, Goldingay joined the Seattle Sounders for their inaugural season and watched as Seattle fans quickly embraced the unfamiliar sport.

In a similar fashion, Portland fans fell for the Timbers in 1975. The Timbers had a very successful season, winning the Western Division Championship Title and making it all the way to the Soccer Bowl before losing to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. An NASL-record 33,000 fans ended up flocking to Civic Stadium for the semifinals between the Timbers and St. Louis.

Goldingay competed for the Timbers for two seasons. After his years in Portland, he moved to Southern California and spent 20 years living in Malibu.

After spending time in Southern California, Goldingay returned to Portland and ended up opening the Mississippi Marketplace food cart pod on Mississippi Ave in 2009. In 2011, Goldingay opened yet another food cart pod called Cartlandia in Southeast Portland.

The Oregonian/OregonLive recently sat down with Goldingay to discuss his decision to come to Portland, his friendship with Bill Walton and the growth of soccer in the Pacific Northwest.

With the Portland Timbers set to begin their 40th anniversary season in 2015, The Oregonian wants to tell the story of the people behind the team with our 'Timbers at 40' series. Fans, players, coaches or anyone involved with the Portland Timbers are invited to contact us with their tales of the Timbers and how soccer in the Rose City has impacted their life. If you would like to share your story with Timbers beat reporter Jamie Goldberg, please send us a note.

How did you end up coming here for that 1975 season?

I was released from the Sounders just before the season started in 1975...I came down to Portland just as they were starting their tryouts. There were hundreds of people trying out for the Timbers. You had to stand out. They had two, three openings for American players. I walked on in an open tryout. It was a similar thing to what I did in Seattle, but I had a year of professional experience in Seattle, so I think that was very helpful when I came to Portland.

There were only a few Americans on the team. How was that dynamic having mostly a bunch of guys from England and only a few Americans?

They were a great bunch of guys, but the difficulty was that there wasn't much respect for American players at the time. That's what's great now with MLS. You see these teams and there are all American players. Back then, if you were an American you were going to be on the bench. We basically watched the games most of the time. I would get in a few minutes, nothing very substantial.

What was your experience with Timbers coach Vic Crowe like?

I thought he was a great coach, certainly the best coach I ever had. He was very fair, very tough, very demanding. He demanded your best and if he didn't get it, you were going to pay for it. The club learned that really quickly. One of the reasons we were such a good team is he didn't have anybody on the team that had superstar status. It was not like the NBA is, the NFL. It was very different. He had tremendous respect out of his players. Everyone wanted to work for him. He practiced with us. He would come crawling up your back to beat you to a header. He would tell you to get the ball in the net any way you could. It didn't have to be pretty.

Is there any specific memory or game that stands out to you from 1975?

I think when Tony Betts scored that winning goal in overtime (against the Seattle Sounders in the quarterfinals of the NASL playoffs), it was the most incredible moment. The place was so full. It was so packed with people. When we got to the game, they had rolled in bleachers right up to the edge of the field. There was like five feet between the edge of the field and the bleachers. Every inch of space was jammed...When Tony scored that goal, the place just erupted because it was sudden death overtime. There's a photo of players running off the bench, but what was amazing was that everybody in the bleachers, everybody ran on the field. It was an amazing moment.

Roger Goldingay and other 1975 Portland Timbers players and staff are pictured.

You mentioned to me that you were good friends with Bill Walton? How did you become friends with him?

He was a soccer fan, so he was coming to the Timbers games and he invited a few guys to come over and hang out and play games and scrimmage with some of the local guys and him. We kind of hit it off, two professional athletes that respected each other and enjoyed each other's company. So, we hung out together. He gave me some work after I finished with the Timbers. It was working on some of his property. I put on a roof on his house...

We would work out together. I taught him to play soccer. He'd never kicked the ball before. When I first met him, he had had surgery on his wrist, so he couldn't play basketball. So, we would go to the soccer field and train and practice and play. He was a great striker because I'd be the winger and I'd just set him up. He was so much taller than everybody, so he'd just whack it in. He picked it up, probably quicker than anybody you could imagine. He had never touched a ball before. We worked out a lot together and trained. He would come and watch Timbers practices too and he was a big fan of going to the games. When the Timbers weren't playing, we would show up at some pick up game and start playing and showing off, playing with the local guys.

Were you surprised by how quickly the fan support for the Timbers picked up that first season?

Not at all. I was in the first season of the Seattle Sounders and it started out very similar. It was almost exactly the same. I had played soccer a lot in Seattle. I had grown up there. My father started the Washington State Junior Soccer Association. It just took off in Seattle the first year in a very similar way to how it did in Portland in that first season, though I think it was a bit more intense by the end of the season in Portland.

You grow up in the Washington area?

My parents left England when I was a year old and we spent some time in Canada. We moved from Vancouver when I was eight to Seattle. When we came to Seattle, there were no soccer balls in the states, so we were kicking basketballs around for the first three or four months. My dad had to go back to Vancouver to pick up some soccer balls for us, so we could play with real balls... My dad got together four teams, so we actually ended up having a kids' league. Those were the first teams of the Washington State Junior Soccer Association.

You've been involved so much with the growth of soccer in the Pacific Northwest. What's it like for you to see where it is today?

It's impressive. It's very impressive how many kids are playing today and how pervasive soccer is in the culture because it wasn't that way at all, even when I was in high school. There were no high school teams. I started playing in the Washington State Men's League when I was 14 because that's where the players were. They were foreign players. I played for the Seattle Hungarians. They were a team that basically had left Hungary in the 1956 revolution. They were professional players in Hungary and they settled in Seattle and they took me under their wing and I played with them when I was 14, 15, 16 because there was no place else to play...I went to Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and that was in 1972 and I could literally stop traffic in Olympia by juggling a soccer ball on my head on the sidewalk.

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com

503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Portland Timbers, The Oregonian/OregonLive will be running a Q&A series this year with the players that competed for the Timbers during the club's inaugural 1975 season. This is the seventh installment of our 1975 Portland Timbers Q&A series.