VANCOUVER — Andy O’Brien’s eyes are stinging as beads of sweat pour with the fury of a swollen creek from his forehead.

He tries to blink them away, but to no avail. Four times during a brief session with reporters following a Vancouver Whitecaps training session, he pulls up the front of his practice pinny to stem the flow.

While his teammates finished up practice on another hot, sunny day with intense six-on-six scrimmages, the 34-year-old centre back was reduced to running laps around the outside of the field.

His games-missed total due to a balky hamstring that just won’t come around has reached eight. He is beyond frustrated. But through the disappointment and the sting in his eyes, the soft-spoken former Irish international still manages a couple of small smiles.

“In situations like this, if you think about yourself too much, you can dig yourself into a hole and you need to put it into perspective,” says O’Brien, who has been candid about previous battles with depression.

A sturdy defender who uses size and guile to play a steady game, O’Brien noted the sad injury history of U.S. international Stuart Holden, who tore his right ACL in Sunday’s Gold Cup win against Panama. Holden, who plays for Bolton in England, broke his right leg in March 2010, then injured his left knee a year later, requiring two surgeries that sidelined him until January of this year.

“I’ve been lucky with injuries,” he says, adding that his current situation is “frustrating, but the reality is I’ll be back at some point.”

It won’t be this weekend in Portland, though. And, incredibly, O’Brien could conceivably be beaten back to the pitch by his former centre back partner Jay DeMerit.

The captain sustained what was initially thought to be a season-ending Achilles tendon rupture eight minutes into the MLS regular-season opener. But he has made remarkable progress in his rehabilitation and has been a full participant in practice the last week.

“Hopefully,” said head coach Martin Rennie when asked if DeMerit could play in a reserve game Sunday in Portland, a day after the Caps-Timbers MLS matchup. “I would like to see that. We’ll probably look at that Thursday or Friday.

“But he’s training hard, training full out. And that was a pretty intense session today. And if there’s no (adverse) reaction to that, it seems like there’d be a good chance. That’s the next step for him, to be in some kind of game.”

And still with centre backs, it appears Brad Rusin, who finally limped off late in last Saturday’s 1-0 loss to Philadelphia after a warrior-like performance battling through some tough knocks, will play against the Timbers after making it through practice Tuesday despite some pain.

Rusin bruised his hip/buttocks when he fell to the ground after going up and over a Union player for a header. But he revealed Tuesday that it’s a couple of displaced ribs on his left side that are giving him the most trouble.