by JAKE NUTTING

Heading into Saturday night’s match in Cary, NC, the Carolina RailHawks had only scrounged together three goals in their last six league matches. Meanwhile, the Rowdies were facing their first match without the center back combo of Tamika Mkandawire and Neil Collins after the two were knocked out halfway through last week’s match.

Veterans Stefan Antonijevic and Frankie Sanfilippo were thrown into the fire against the slumping RailHawks attack, and in the end each ended up conceding a penalty to put the Rowdies in a whole they could not find a way out of as they found themselves on the losing end of a 4-1 result.

“We knew [Collins and Mkandawire] were going to be big misses for us,” Rowdies Head Coach Stuart Campbell said. “Defensively we’ve been very good this season and they’ve been a big component of that. We still shouldn’t concede four goals.”

The match began with some promising sequences moving forward in the first few minutes, but it was the RailHawks who bagged a go-ahead goal off the head of recent acquisition Matt Fondy. Making his first appearances since transferring from Jacksonville, Fondy showed more on Saturday than he did throughout the entire Spring Season for Jacksonville.

The forward notched the opening goal when he was left with space to run onto a corner kick and blast the ball in the back of the net in the 11th minute with his head.

Tampa Bay’s response to conceding early was positive. The team kept their heads up and continued to press forward and earned a penalty after Eric Avila was clipped just inside the box. Georgi Hristov waited for keeper Bryan Sylvestre to commit to his left before pushing his shot to the opposite post for his fifth goal of the year.

Carolina’s attack gained a foothold in the second and produced two top-notch opportunities that were only thwarted by some heads up play from keeper Matt Pickens. The veteran rushed off his line to deny Matt Watson in the 32nd minute with a sliding tackle and then sacrificed his body to stymie Brian Shriver on a point-blank effort inside the six-yard-box.

Then came the penalties.

First Antonijevic was whistled for a foul while attempting a recovery tackle to disrupt Fondy after the attacker had been left totally unmarked in the center of the box in the 55th minute. Only four minutes later, Sanilippo drew the referee’s whistle for blocking a cross from Fondy with an arm as he tried to brace his fall.

Shriver and Nazmi Albadawi were the penalty takers, and each went to the right with powerful shots that Pickens couldn’t get a hand on despite guessing correctly.

“Their first one I thought was very close,” Campbell said. “The ball came across, and I thought Stefan got a touch on the ball. There was a coming together, and I thought that was a very hard decision by the referee. And then the one where [Sanfilippo] slid across and it hit his arm, I honestly couldn’t tell from my vantage point, so I won’t comment on that either way.”

Harsh calls or not, penalties had nothing to do with the fourth goal that the Rowdies allowed in the 71st minute to truly seal their fate. Albadawi was left free after an interception to run nearly 30 yards uncontested before Joe Cole came in with a weak tackle attempt. Albadawi easily cut past Cole and, still with no impending pressure from any of the defenders, fired a shot from outside the box to beat Pickens again.

The Rowdies will look to rebound in their next match as they host their first meeting with NASL newcomer Puerto Rico FC, who drew with Spring Season winner Indy Eleven in week one but then fell 2-1 to Jacksonville.