Owain Evans

Wheeler-Omiunu: Oakland postponement “kicked us into gear”

With Phoenix Rising set to take on Sacramento this weekend, Republic defender Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu described being “disappointed” at how his side’s match last weekend was postponed.

Wheeler-Omiunu, who featured in six matches for Phoenix in 2019, described the struggle of figuring out “psychologically how to go about our day leading up to it and our day coming down after the decision was made.” Sacramento’s match against Oakland Roots was ultimately postponed less than half hour before kick off due to the field’s temporary turf surface being deemed unplayable by match and league officials.

“I can’t sit here and speak negatively about any organizational things, I can only speak from the perspective of a player in a very competitive league in the year 2021 in a sport that is continuing to grow in this country,” he added. “As a player, with all those factors considered, it was disappointing because you feel like you’re past that, given all the things that I mentioned. You feel like the safety or playability, if you will, of a field should not even be an afterthought that comes into your mind. It should never come in, not even into your subconscious.

“So it’s disappointing in that regard. I don’t think there was any mal-intent behind it by anybody. Hopefully, whoever makes the decisions on that stuff makes better decisions in the future. They take information, they learn from it, and going forward, those won’t be problems anywhere – not just in the one place that we were, but anywhere.”

Earlier this week, Phoenix Rising coach Rick Schantz expressed his surprise that the field issues weren’t caught sooner.

“I heard about it before the season started, so I’m surprised that nobody went out to check the field,” Rick Schantz said. “I was always told that they were laying turf on top of turf, and to me that sounds like a bit of a disaster. I know some young players who have played there in the NISA league and they’ve talked to me and they’ve said ‘look, it’s really bouncy. It’s something weird getting used to,’ but they said it wasn’t that bad.

“I’m glad they postponed it because if the field was dangerous at all for Sacramento or even for the Oakland players, I think it’s important that we take care of player safety, always. It has to be first.”

Oakland has since announced that it plans to play its home match this Saturday behind closed doors at its training facility. The club will return to Laney College, with a newly-fitted field, ahead of its match on July 10. Rising will play away to Roots on July 14.

Looking back on last weekend’s postponement, Wheeler-Omiunu doesn’t feel that it caused any strange feelings at the start of the week in training. Instead, his side is taking the positives.

“It set a weird tone for the bus ride home,” Wheeler-Omiunu laughed. “Nobody was happy. We wanted to play.”

“It didn’t set a weird tone [for training]. It kind of kicked us into gear a little bit at the start of this week, because now it’s been quite a layoff since our last game until this coming Saturday. I think it’s been like two and a half weeks. It was just like on the bus ride home we’re like ‘we’re not happy, but we’re also really grateful that nobody tore any ligaments’ which is always a positive when you play a sport.”

Rising travels to Heart Health Park to face Sacramento Republic for the second time this season on Saturday, kicking off at 8 p.m.

Want to hear more? Preview Saturday’s game with Rising Matchday – streaming at 8 a.m. Saturday morning on YouTube and Facebook, and available on demand shortly after.