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The Fury could easily have put it away with great scoring chances by Andonijah Reid and Tony Taylor in the second half, then had to hang on as Indy pressed the issue in the final minutes.

The win gives the Fury a great start to a July schedule for a team just glad to see the last of June’s gruelling travel.

“We have to be proud of the players,” said Fury head coach Nikola Popovic.”

It was a very tough game for us, they [Indy] are perhaps of the best teams in the USL, so this makes our win even more important and satisfying.

“We had to take into account that these guys have been playing games after games with all the travel. So as a coach, we have to take into consideration everything and create a strategy for the game. We tried to create a strategy that would be enough to win, and we’re happy because at the end of the day, we were able to make a fantastic effort and get the win against a very good team.”

June was so tough on the Fury with just one win in five USL match’s for the month with another, a June 16 game in Atlanta, still in need of resolution after lightening finally forced the game to be suspended.

So after they return home to Ottawa on Thursday, the Fury won’t have another USL road trip until an August 10 date in Nashville and played five in a row at TD Place beginning Sunday afternoon against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds. Penn FC, Nashville, Louisville City and Tampa Bay will all visit before the Fury have to pull their passports out again.

And around that stretch of home cooking, the Fury also have the added pressures of the Canadian Soccer Championship semifinal against Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC.

The first leg goes July18 at TD Place with the second leg at BMO Field in Toronto seven days later.

Ottawa shocked Toronto last year by winning the 1st leg 1-0 before being overwhelmed at BMO by a 4-0 count to lose the series 5-2.

Just the same, every game in July and August is going to be key.

In fact, the Fury prospects for the USL playoffs will likely be decided between now and August 25 with eight of their next 10 at TD Place before the road to the playoffs gets a little more difficult in September with a stretch of five straight away games between August 31 and September 26.