Cast your mind back to a overcast Saturday evening in February. It was almost nine months ago that the San Jose Earthquakes christened Avaya Stadium in Major League Soccer with a 2-1 win over the Chicago Fire, which ended their painful fifteen-match winless streak in MLS. Their lineup that day only contained one player from their team that lost to Chivas USA on the final day of the 2014 season.

The Quakes’ 2015 campaign had opened in Dallas a week prior and at the end of a season’s worth of evolution, it came back down to another meeting with FC Dallas tonight, in which they came so painfully close to an unlikely playoff berth but eventually succumbed to a 2-1 defeat. Only an odd note of solace can come from knowing that as it turned out even a win wouldn’t have been enough as all four of their playoff rivals bagged three points. In a season of new beginnings, the Quakes were haunted by old demons yet again.

Matias Perez-Garcia was cast the villain as Dallas came back from behind, his senseless second-half red-card all but burying the Quakes’ playoff hopes. The Goonies are known for their never-say-die attitude, but they went down fighting in all the wrong ways tonight with Garcia lashing out at opposite number ten Mauro Diaz, earning a straight red. His complaints lasted upwards of two minutes and wouldn’t cease until captain Chris Wondolowski pushed him off the field.

The Quakes’ false-hopes have pained them all season, from a fantastic run of forming September right down to today’s first half. “We frustrated them, especially early on,” said Quincy Amarikwa. “In the first half they didn’t have an answer for us. I feel like we made them switch tactics, play a more uncomfortable style than they are used to. They like to play out of the back, and we were giving the first entry pass, but the second one, they couldn’t figure it out. We had them on their heels the whole first half.”

Dallas looked uninterested in the opening stages and the Quakes took the game to them. Ten minutes in, Wondo slipped Amarikwa in one-on-one with Dallas goalkeeper Jesse Gonzalez, but a heavy first touch from the forward gave Gonzalez just enough time to come out and make himself big. Yet Amarikwa showcased his trademark tenacity to avenge the miss, and less than four minutes later, bagged the opener after muscling his defender down the right side of the box, cutting inside and curling a low effort into the bottom left corner of the net. Soon after, Amarikwa could be found chasing another loose ball only to be dragged down, bringing the defender down with him. Yet the former Chicago Fire front-man crawled over the defender to get to the ball and square it to Wondo, who saw a poked effort from fifteen yards stopped by Gonzalez at the near post.

Wondo also saw a stooping header from a corner parried wide by the American goalkeeper, before Marc Pelosi drove a thirty-yard volley wide. As the Quakes pinned back Dallas, they won another corner and before placing the ball down take it, Garica gave the ball a little kiss. Yet it might just have been the kiss of death, for Dallas soon equalized — Fabian Castillo broke past Marvell Wynne down the left and Diaz poked the ball home following a defensive mix-up at the end of Castillo’s cut-back — and by the end of the half, two other results in the Quakes’ favor across the country had flipped. When news of the Portland Timbers’ go-ahead goal over the Colorado Rapids filtered through into Texas, the cameras panned to Wondolowski. His language didn’t need a translator.

The Quakes’ brief moment among the playoff qualifiers evaporated by halftime. Then, although Wondo came close with a glancing header early in the second half, it only went down from there for the Quakes. Castillo fired a twenty yard effort narrowly over and shortly after Garcia’s red card, Victor Ulloa capitalized on a terribly unlucky rebound from Clarence Goodson’s attempted clearance to complete Dallas’ comeback with ten minutes to spare.

The realization that their season was over was rapidly hitting the Quakes. Many hours after the final whistle blew, the customary post-match press release from the team is still pending. Perhaps there is no point being caught up in what-ifs for too long. It’s a lesson that Quakes fans are learning the hard way as the club shuts their doors for the winter.

Post-match reactions:

SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES HEAD COACH DOMINIC KINNEAR

On the match:

“I thought we started the game off really well, and then, to be honest, we’re not going to keep them, with the players that they have, away from our goal for 90 minutes. I thought we deserved to be 1-0 up, maybe one more, but you have to give them credit. They have a good team. They move the ball around well. [Mauro] Diaz is such an important player for them. He does some really good things. Then you have [Fabian] Castillo and [Michael] Barrios with that pace. We started off good, but to keep up that tempo and dominance is going to be difficult. I can’t fault the guys for trying. Their effort tonight was something to be proud of.”

On playing a man down:

“In the end, the result for us, if we would have won the game, it doesn’t help us, but I still thought that the guys showed a tremendous amount of effort and even at the end were still trying to get back in to the game. Coming in here playing against 11 is tough, and then when you have 10, it makes the job that much harder.”

SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES FORWARD QUINCY AMARIKWA

On the match:

“I think we played well as a team…I think they felt they were lucky to get that first goal to tie it up, and we did the same thing coming out in the second half. We caught them on their heels again and, unfortunately, something happened off the ball and the ref felt it wasn’t red card worthy for both players and at that point it took the wind out of our sails and hindered our ability to keep putting the pressure higher up the field because we were down a man.”

On the disappointment of falling short of the playoffs:

“The number one goal is to make playoffs. I feel we did really well to put ourselves in a great position to do that. I think at the beginning of the year, if you would have asked the guys, would you take 13 wins and 47 points entering the last game of the season, I think every single person would say yes. I don’t know too many times in the past where that wouldn’t be enough to get you into the playoffs. But I think that’s a testament to how deep the Western Conference is.”