He’s going into the week with an optimistic outlook. Despite the Impact’s disappointing finish in its final D-2 season Lowery feels he’s shown enough to warrant serious consideration.

With a stellar amateur career behind him, Brian Decaire signed with his hometown team in 1982, becoming the first local talent to enlist with the NASL’s Montreal Manic. He spent two seasons with the team and, now almost 30 years removed from the pitch, looks back on his time in the pro ranks with mixed emotions.

Undistracted from the task at hand in tonight’s match against the visiting FC Edmonton, getting the three points needed to close the gap between them and Minny, the Impact came through in the clutch with a 2-0 win and has almost climbed out of the hole that it has dug for itself with its dismal play in the first half of the season. Montreal is now just a single point behind Minnesota with each team having a game left on the schedule. Montreal owns the tiebreaker between the two teams.

In front of 12,247 fans Sunday, the home side gave head coach Nick De Santis the best possible birthday present, prevailing in a 1-0 decision over the high-flying Carolina RailHawks, who have already clinched first place in the NASL this season and with it a bye for the opening go-round.

Tonight’s adversaries played the final 60 minutes a man short but, despite this assistance, the best the Impact could manage was a 1-1 tie against the Puerto Rico Islanders.

As it turned out, things went a lot better for the Strikers than they did for the Impact. The teams avoided a third sister-kissing result with the home side coming away with their desired result in a 1-0 contest.

Only four of the dozen men who took to the pitch dressed in Impact blue for the team’s 2-0 triumph Saturday against the visiting NSC Minnesota Stars were participants in Montreal’s season opener in April.

With his team's final NASL season circling the drain, Impact coach Nick De Santis put out a line-up that some may have felt was randomly drawn from a hat, but one that paid dividends as the Montreal side ran roughshod over the last-place Atlanta Silverbacks, taking a 4-0 decision in front of some 11,000 delighted fans.

Coming into tonight’s game against FC Tampa Bay — needing to make up a point a game on the sixth-place Fort Lauderdale over the course of the season’s last nine games in order to take part in the postseason — the Montreal Impact tonight snatched a draw from the jaws of victory, as the visiting FC Tampa Bay came back from a two-goal deficit at the 84-minute mark to end the night in a 3-3 draw.

In the end, the new graphic was well-received but the evening ended on a down note for Montreal, who dropped a 3-1 decision to the third-place Minnesota Stars, a game in which it did not challenge seriously for victory.