Triangle Offense

WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—Every sport houses its particular set of unwritten rules and unspoken consequences. In American football, you don’t run up the score on an overmatched opponent late in a game. In hockey, you don’t cross the red line during warm-ups. In basketball, you pull your starters if you have a significant lead late in the game, and you don’t cherry-pick for the sake of padding individual stats. And don’t even start with baseball, where the undocumented law seems to outweigh the written—heck, it’s a sport where running either too fast OR too slow around the bases after hitting a homerun will get you plunked by the pitcher during your ensuing at bat.

Soccer also has a code, and Saturday night at WakeMed Soccer Park, 3,568 fans seemingly saw both its breach and the comeuppance for its transgression. The end result was the first league victory for the Carolina RailHawks, who defeated the NASL-leading Puerto Rico Islanders 2-1 despite Carolina playing a (significant) man down for over 50 minutes.