“The buck stops with me,” said the coach. “I’m big enough to accept that when things go like that, it’s a reflection on Colin Miller.”

The first edition the NASL’s unofficial Canadian derby went to San Francisco Deltas.

FC Edmonton captain Nik Ledgerwood didn’t sugar-coat his critique of his team’s play after the Eddies were eliminated at the first stage of the Canadian Championship for the second year in a row by the Ottawa Fury.

“I believe that continuity is massive,” said Miller. “I see some teams in North America that throw a hand grenade to their rosters every season. We are not going to look at changing over 15 or 16 players. The lads who are returning did well for us last year.”

Ubiparipovic’s 63rd-minute shot from the top of the box found the top corner of the Eddies’ goal, giving the Indy Eleven a 1-0 home win in the first of two NASL Championship seminfinals played in Saturday.

Maybe the Carolina RailHawks need to hire a shaman. Maybe someone at the club has wronged a Canadian in the past, and to fix it they’ll need to have Drew Beckie sing William Shatner quotes to the tunes of Rush songs.

It was only the Eddies second loss in 10 games. But, you might have figured that this one was gonna be a problem for FCE.

After a 46-minute delay because of lightning and torrential rain, the Eddies got spectacular goalkeeping from Matt VanOekel and a fantastic goal from Daryl Fordyce as they beat the Strikers 1-0.

“If we wouldn’t have slipped up in Miami two weeks ago, we’d be having a party right now,” said Keegan, who opened the scoring with his foot and scored the second with the back of his head.

“Any time you’re not scoring, at least over a goal per game, it’s frustrating,” said Keegan. “For the most part, apart from the first three games, we’ve been scoring just enough to win games. Obviously in Miami (the loss that eliminated the Eddies from the spring-season title race) we didn’t get it done.”