Conan, Oliver Stone and the Crew Reserves

The Crew and Impact reserves met up a day after the 2:0 victory by the senior team on June 15th. They wound up losing 1:0 but standing there on a cool damp Sunday morning in Obetz watching a bunch of players working their tails off for practically nothing gets your mind going.

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A couple years ago I decided that I was going to jump all in on the Crew. I wanted a team to follow and look at analytically and critically to see if I could apply some of the manufacturing tools I was learning at the time to something outside the industry. No time table was set as I wanted to follow for as long as the fire burns hot enough.

This sort of brings me back to the image above and to something Oliver Stone said during an interview for a documentary about the making of Conan the Barbarian (the 1982 one, Stone was a writer).

The interview was done during the peak of Stone's powers and long after Conan The Barbarian came out. I remember wondering why he would be taking the time to talk about this movie. Turns out he loved it. He wanted to make twelve of them. Difficult to explain but it was refreshing to hear a movie I loved as a kid being loved by a giant in the industry. I had expected the complete opposite from him.

Robert E. Howard

During the interview he told a great story he knew about the creator of Conan, Robert E. Howard. He said that when Howard got tired of writing or near exhaustion and wanting to quit he would imagine Conan standing behind him with a battleaxe, waiting to split him in two if he got up from his desk.

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There is something dense, raw and complex occurring at these Crew reserve matches that I like. In a lot of ways it is competition her most basic sports form. It's a chance for a fringe player get promoted to the senior team or a wilting vet finding himself after a bad string of 1st team matches.

There is a sharp type of energy that you only find where failure means ruin and success means riches ("riches" in quotes for most in MLS).

I've been to a few reserve games at the Obetz training facility and can't help but imagine imagine the Nordecke in all her glory ghosted in north east corner. Larger than life. Louder than bombs. Urging the players on in the same the fear of ruin and lust for glory that kept Robert E. Howard tied to his desk.

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Here's some Basil Poledouris to listen to.

"We are just men, not gods, not giants, just men. And the secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, you must learn its discipline, for no one, no one in this world can you trust, not men, not women, not beasts... This you can trust."