The scoreboard said Ottawa Fury FC and Rayo OKC played to a 1-1 draw in a North American Soccer League game at TD Place stadium on Saturday night.

Unofficially, Fury FC salvaged that single point in the standings despite encountering a feisty opponent, a gaffe that led to an early deficit, the ejection of head coach Paul Dalglish (more on that later) and a daunting competition schedule comprising seven league and cup matches in 25 days.

Ian Svantesson gave Rayo OKC (3-3-4) a lead with his goal in the second minute, capitalizing on a mistake by Ottawa’s Julian de Guzman, but Carl Haworth got de Guzman off the hook and earned a point for Fury FC (2-3-5) with a spectacular free-kick goal in the 60th minute.

Now Haworth and his teammates can take a well-deserved break between the spring and fall seasons of the schedule, which resumes with an away game against the New York Cosmos on July 2. How, Haworth was asked, would he spend that break?

“Oh …I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just going to relax, recharge the legs, just take some time off from everything for a little bit and then get back at it probably in a week or so.”

Dalglish will no doubt spend part of the break dwelling on what he said later was his first ejection ever as a coach. Angered by a tackle by a Rayo OKC player just outside the 18-yard box, the Fury FC boss directed his venom toward his counterparts on the opposing side and for that was given a red card by fourth official Robert Schaap in the 27th minute.

The infraction will be reviewed by the NASL disciplinary committee, but at the very least Dalglish will be suspended for that July 2 contest at New York.

“I got a little bit emotional after that (tackle), but, as I said, it’s stupid for me to react like that,” Dalglish said. “All apologies. I shouldn’t act like that.”

With assistant coach Martin Nash in charge, Fury FC continued to play hard, but it took a long time to erase the early deficit resulting from Svantesson’s goal, the byproduct of an error by de Guzman on a back pass from Kyle Porter.

The start was the first for de Guzman with Fury FC since April 30 because of his own thigh injury and an international assignment with the national men’s squad. He had entered Wednesday’s Amway Canadian Championship semifinal leg against the Vancouver Whitecaps as a second-half substitute.

He had been expected to play about 60 minutes before yielding to a substitute, but pushed on because others had to go off first and was only replaced in the 89th minute by Dario Conte?

Who?

That would be an 18-year-old midfielder from Fury FC’s academy squad, who was called into the team office on Friday and asked to sign a one-year amateur contract. Defender Adam Malekos, also 18, received a similar callup, but didn’t make it onto the field on Saturday night.

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Conte said. “I just knew what I had to do and (Nash) told me what I had to do, and I performed.”

The callups for Malekos and Conte only doubled the number of available field substitutes for Fury FC in its final contest of the spring season.

It had been known that Fury FC would have to face Rayo OKC without forwards Pablo Dyego (knee) and Gerardo Bruna (groin), and defenders Kyle Venter (knee) and Rich Balchan (groin), and it wasn’t surprising when midfielder Marcel de Jong (concussion) and defender Onua Thomas Obasi (Achilles) were ruled out. However, it was news just before kickoff that they had been joined on the injured list by defenders Rafael Alves and Fernando Timbo because of various ailments accumulated before and during the recent marathon stretch of competition.

For its part, Rayo OKC welcomed back midfielder Derek Boateng and forward Georgios Samaras, who both missed last week’s game against Minnesota United FC because of suspensions for accumulated yellow cards.

However, forwards Billy Forbes and Michel, the league’s leading scorer with five goals, had to serve the second part of their two-game suspensions for red cards against the Cosmos on May 28.

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