By Ivan Yeo
If you were wondering how Brian Rowe would fare just four days removed from a monumental gaffe, the answer is he’s just fine thank you.
With the sour memory of letting Dider Drogba’s late free kick slip through hands for a stoppage time winning goal still very fresh in his mind, Rowe simply picked himself back up on Thursday evening. Rowe looked more confident and assertive against Sporting Kansas City, making some key saves and plays in its scoreless draw on Thursday.
“A good bounce back,” Galaxy defender AJ DeLaGarza said. “He didn’t have too much to do, a couple saves maybe and distribution was good.”
With the Galaxy attack neutralized for most of the evening, Rowe linked with the backline to turn in the team’s second clean sheet of the season. Nevertheless, Rowe made some key saves in the second half, both on SKC’s Jimmy Medranda. The first save occured in the 50th minute, as Medranda fired a dangerous one-timer off his left foot inside the penalty area, but Rowe calmly made the play. Medranda fired the same shot again in the 68th minute, this time from outside the box, but again, Rowe didn’t flinch and collected the shot rather easily.
It wasn’t just saves that Rowe was making on Thursday night. Rowe made himself big enough in the 40th minute whe Paulo Nagamura played Dom Dwyer into the penalty area, Dwyer tried to slot the shot past Rowe, but it missed the far post. Other key plays made by Rowe included beating Benny Feilhaber to a 50-50 ball inside the penalty area, and parrying a shot by Dwyer over the crossbar.
“There was really no change for me’, Rowe said. “With any sport you have highs and lows and that was definitely one of the worst lows I’ve had. So it was nice getting back to training on Monday and having the support of the guys and the coaches and knowing they were behind me. So when I got to training, I focused on it like any other game.”
It’s easy to wonder how a mistake such as the one made agains the Impact last Saturday would effect Rowe going forward, especially with a veteran keeper like Dan Kennedy waiting just in case. Rowe however looks to have cast aside any doubt about his ability to bounce back from that fateful night in Montreal and in the process, might have cemented himself as the Galaxy’s starting keeper for the foreseeable future.
