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Rockville, MD – Real Maryland FC Monarchs and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds drew to a 0-0 tie on Saturday night. On a windy, chilly evening 1,100 fans watched intensely as their Monarchs opened up the 2010 Season. The stalemate was due in part to good goalkeeping, solid defense and the newness of the season.

The game began with the opening ceremonies where the City of Rockville’s Mayor and Council Members made some remarks on wishing the team the best of luck on the new season and ceremoniously kicked the first ball of 2010. From there, the two teams went at each other trying to immediately find a weakness in each other’s armor.

Real Maryland FC began the aerial attach down the flanks, but the outside backs of Pittsburgh allowed only balls to be easily collected by keeper Hunter Gilstrap. Pittsburgh applied pressure back of there own, but both teams found them selves trying to get their footing of the new season for most of the first half.

In the second half, the energy picked up where in the 65th minute Nicki Paterson’s header narrowly missed goal off of a beautiful cross. Just 5 minutes later Pittsburgh was back in the Monarchs end whipping the ball in from the right side getting over the head of the defense and keeper. With the ball bouncing in the box, Jeremy Deigton cleaned up the Monarch’s mistake with a bicycle kick that just narrowly missed the goal.

Pittsburgh continued to keep up the pressure, but goalkeeper Brian Levey came up with some brilliant saves to keep the game scoreless. This seemed to liven up the Monarchs because a majority of the play began to shift to the offensive part of the field for the rest of the half.

In the 73rd minute, Jyler Noviello narrowly missed another Monarch opportunity off of a cross, but this time the shot was blocked for a corner as the Pittsburgh GK and defense swarmed their goal to protect. In the 76th minute, Noviello had another opportunity, but goalkeeper Hunter Gilstrap was there to block it. With a rebound given up the Monarchs number 7, Ben Hunter tried to clean it up and put it away but the ball sailed wide.

As the game heated up, a couple of small tussles began in the center part of the field. Both teams wanted to take home the three points and fought relentlessly to do so. Though the Monarchs outplayed the Riverhounds in the second half of the match, Pittsburg was able to come away with a valuable road point.

The Monarchs will now travel to Richmond, who is also coming off of a tie, next Saturday, April 24th. The Riverhounds will travel down to Charleston, who earned the lone victory of the opening of the 2010 Season. Real Maryland FC and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds will face off again not until June 6th where we will most likely see two very different teams.