May 4, 2019: Flint City Bucks

May 4, 2019
Pre-Season Friendly
Atwood Stadium, Flint, MI

Flint City Bucks 1, Detroit City FC 0
Flint City Bucks: Umar Osman 35′

Attendance: 4,736

On October 30, 2018, the Michigan Bucks announced their move from Pontiac to Flint in the USL-2.  The Bucks have been a successful franchise on the field, winning five regular season titles and three North American Championships since 1995.  They’ve beaten a few MLS teams in the U.S. Open Cup as well.  However, they’ve been unsuccessful in creating a supporter-base, their match day attendance trickling into three-digits.

And we’ve had our fun with them, winning two of three U.S. Open Matches against them in 2016 and 2018.  So, I guess this was kind of a big deal for them to have us visit as their opponent for their inaugural match.

As expected, under the authority of MLS-USL crowd control, we were greeted with five-pages of stadium policies, including a Patron Code of Conduct loaded with a bunch of “Do Nots”

 

Tenacity Brewing was our pre-match hydration station.

At around the 15-minute mark, a nasty collision forced keeper Hunter Morse to leave the pitch.  Max Jewett stepped in to finish out the match.

A clean tackle by Stephen Carroll, deemed a foul by the referee, set up the free kick by Umar Osman which beat Max Jewett in the 35th minute.

 

 

All-in-all, it was a really good match, with both teams getting opportunities.  This wrapped up the pre-season.  With three losses and only a single goal scored, there was little concern.  Just a tiny bit.  On the whole, Trevor James assembled a quality cast of players, and the level of play looked like an upgrade.  With a little patience to allow the team to gel, we were ready for the season to begin.  Our first test would be the following weekend against the Michigan Stars.